German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp will cut up to 20,000 more jobs in the next fiscal year after already eliminating 12,000 positions due to the financial crisis, a report said on Saturday.
“Through disinvestments and restructuring, the company’s personnel will in the next fiscal year be reduced again by 15,000 to 20,000 positions,” ThyssenKrupp chief Ekkehard Schulz told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Most of the cuts will come from the sale of some branches of the group. But between 2,000 and 2,500 jobs will also be eliminated from its administration in Germany and abroad, Schulz said.
ThyssenKrupp cut 12,000 jobs in Germany, France, Britain and Romania in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, which ended last month.
Meanwhile, dock workers at the Greek port of Piraeus agreed to suspend their 17-day strike until Nov. 2 while the newly elected Socialist government renegotiates the terms of a 35-year concession of the port’s container terminal to Chinese company Cosco Pacific.
The dock workers said in a statement on Saturday they would return to their jobs today and that it would take three to four days to clear the back log of several thousand containers that have piled up in Greece’s largest port.
Greek merchants estimate they have lost 30 million euros (US$44.6 million) from the strike, which began on Oct. 1 — the day Cosco Pacific was scheduled to take over management of the two-pier terminal from the state.
The dockers objected to the agreement, saying it would cost them jobs as Cosco modernized the port facilities, and initially demanded the deal be scrapped altogether. Later, they said they would settle for the government renegotiating the deal’s terms to add measures including job assurances and to revise tax breaks that had been offered to Cosco.
“We have suspended our action,” Federation of Greek Port Workers president president Giorgos Georgakopoulos said. “We look forward to radical revisions that will change the core of the agreement.”
He said the federation, together with the Piraeus dockers, would submit their proposals soon.
Cosco has agreed to let the Piraeus Port Authority operate the piers on its behalf until on Nov. 2.
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