At BNP Paribas Fortis, according to the socialist trade union BBTK, 2500 jobs are on the way. The largest bank in Belgium would like to reduce its employment with that number over the next three years. A large part can probably leave the group through natural redundancies, but for another thousand people another solution has to be found.
According to BBTK, this reorganization is the reason why the union still signs under two collective labor agreements regarding employment guarantee and working time extension.
“It was a choice between the plague and cholera,” said federal secretary Pia Desmet of the union. “We did not really have a free choice.”
BBTK heard earlier this week that there would be a thousand forced redundancies without the collective agreement on the employment guarantee. According to Desmet, the signature of the union would already provide a solution for at least eight hundred people, in the form of an exit scheme for older employees.
Trade unions and management at BNP Paribas Fortis had been discussing the files for some time. The previous collective labor agreement with guarantees regarding employment ended at the end of last year. In exchange for an extension, the management asked for a new collective labor agreement so that the staff will have to work longer for about 12 minutes per day. BBTK initially did not pick the two files, but now comes back to that.
