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UNEMPLOYMENT

SCA to slash 1,500 jobs in cost-cutting bid

Swedish hygiene and forestry products company SCA (Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget) is cutting 1,500 jobs in a bid to save billions of kronor, the company revealed in Stockholm on Monday.

Published: 5 November 2012 12:10 CET
SCA to slash 1,500 jobs in cost-cutting bid

“A new efficiency programme has been initiated within the hygiene operations to further reduce costs and increase productivity,” SCA President and CEO Jan Johansson said in a statement.

“It will provide annual cost savings of some €300 million, with full impact in 2015. About 1,500 employees are affected and costs are expected to amount to €100 million.”

Spokesman for SCA, Petter Tiger, wasn’t able to say exactly where the cuts would be made:

“We will be looking at every division,” Tiger told the TT news agency, without being able to disclose how many of the company’s workers in Sweden will be affected.

Currently SCA has some 37,000 employees. The 1,500 redundancies in the hygiene operations mean that 4 percent of the overall work force will be cut.

26,000 of the 37,000 employees are currently working within hygiene product manufacturing. It is still unclear how many of the redundancies will affect workers in Sweden.

The cuts in the hygiene operations are made despite strong third quarter sales, profits and profitability.

Since launching the efficiency programme in 2011, the company has achieved more than half of the expected annual savings of €80 million.

During the past year, SCA completed a number of major acquisitions and divestments. The hygiene operations currently account for 80 percent of SCA’s sales, with the majority in Europe.

The company nevertheless plans to retain its previous targets of a 13 percent return on capital employed over a business cycle, a debt/equity ratio of 0.70 and a debt-payment capacity of 35 percent.

The dividend policy is to pay out one-third of cash flow from current operations, the company said.

Founded in 1929 by Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, better known as the “Match King”, SCA is one of the world’s largest forestry and packing products firms, as well as Europe’s largest private owner of forest land.

TT/Rebecca Martin

twitter.com/thelocalsweden

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BUSINESS

Unemployment in France falls slightly despite the lockdown

Unemployment in France has fallen slightly, despite the ongoing ravages of the health crisis and consequent lockdown, latest statistics show.

Published: 27 April 2021 16:46 CEST
Unemployment in France falls slightly despite the lockdown
Photo: Stephane du Sakatin/AFP

The number of unemployed job seekers in mainland France fell by 0.4 percent in the first three months of 2021, according to figures published by the French Ministry of Labour on Tuesday.

There were 3,560,600 unemployed registered at the Pôle Emploi (unemployment office), 12,200 fewer than during the last three months of 2020.

This follows a 2.7 percent fall in the final three months of 2020 – but the rate is still up 6.8 percent compared with the first three months of 2020, before Europe began to feel the economic impact of the Covid pandemic.

Currently all ‘non essential’ shops in France have been closed since April 3rd, while bars, restaurants, cafés, gyms, cinemas, theatres, museums and tourist sites have been closed since October 2020.

Despite the fall the total number of job seekers, the number of people who were in work but with reduced hours was up by 0.8 percent at the start of 2021, to 2,156,300.

That means that in total 5,716,900 people in mainland France were registered with Pôle emploi during this period, an increase of 4.9 percent compared with a year ago.

“Over the course of 2020, in one year, unemployment rose by 8 percent. This is obviously a lot, but we must remember that during the crisis of 2008-2009, unemployment leapt by 25 percent, so we can see that the government assistance is working,” Minister of Labour Élisabeth Borne told BFMTV on Tuesday.

The French government has put together a huge package of economic aid to try and mitigate the effects of the repeated lockdowns, from chômage partiel (furlough) schemes for employees to aid packages for business owners and the self-employed. But many small retailers have been hit hard by the three periods of closure for non-essential shops, while the tourist, leisure and hospitality sectors have also had a devastating year.

The economic downturn linked to the pandemic has disproportionately affected young people in France.  Across all categories of job seekers (unemployed and with reduced hours), the latest figures show a rise of 7.1 percent in a year for those under 25, compared to 4.5 percent for the 25-29 age range, and 4.8 percent for those aged 50 and over.

Men are also more likely to have signed up to Pôle emploi, with a 6.1 percent increase on last year, compared to a 3.8 percent increase among women.

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