Sicomed and Sanex to shed jobs

Whereas the employees of state-owned companies are blocking the roads demanding compensations worth 36 monthly salaries, two major Romanian companies, Sicomed Bucharest and Sanex Cluj (which are privately-held, by the way) have no trouble applying restructuring programmes that entail serious job-shedding, as well.
The severance pays demonstrate that taking care of the shareholders’ money and taking care of Romanian taxpayers’ money are not one and the same thing.
In line with the “better technology, fewer people” principle, both Sicomed and Sanex yesterday announced they would commence restructuring programmes set to end in laying off half and one third of the employees respectively.
Sicomed Bucharest, the leading Romanian drugmaker will fire about 800 employees over the next twelve months, which process will cost more than 1 million euros and bring the current staff down to half.
“There’s an obvious reason to the layoffs: we have invested $14 million over the last two years and are capable of producing more with fewer people. Prior to privatisation, Sicomed was an obsolete company, both in terms of technology and in terms of personnel structure; we had to change this to be able to withstand competition,” Dan Vasile, Sicomed’s deputy general manager said.
Sanex Cluj-Napoca, maker of tile and sanitary ware will lay off 500 of the over 1,700 employees soon. Three hundred of the five have been sent home on technical unemployment since March, Papai Denes, Sanex union deputy leader was quoted as saying by Mediafax.
“Sanex has been going through a job-shedding process since 2000, when it had more than 2,200 employees; it is now employing a little more than 1,700 people. I can say we’ll see collective layoffs this spring,” Stefan Bucataru, Sanex Cluj-Napoca general manager told Ziarul Financiar.
laurentiu.ispir@zf.ro ; adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro