RWE Ups Layoff Numbers to Over 10,000

When it comes to the companies that give us what we need in our day-to-day life the odds are good that we don’t give them a lot of thought. After all we just expect that the trash will get picked up, the water will be running and the power will be on.  How exactly those things happen is details. We pay the bills and they keep the services coming. We don’t consider how many people are employed in the business of keeping those things flowing.

One such company is RWE, which for those of you who are not familiar with it describes itself in the following terms, “RWE is one of Europe’s five leading electricity and gas companies and is the No. 1 power producer in Germany, No. 2 in the Netherlands and No. 3 in the UK. We continuously expand our position in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe.”

Sadly as an employer the company is not doing very well at all. The company has come to the decision to cut back on another 2,400 jobs in order to service its bottom line. When you add these to the job cuts that the company announced last year the company will be shedding more than 10,000 jobs between now and the end of 2014.

The company put out the following statement about the job cuts that showed how much in the way of savings they expect to save by putting all of these people out of their jobs, “RWE continues to implement the package of measures announced in August 2011. The objective of the package of measures is to reinforce the financial strength of the RWE Group. The capital measures that are part of the package have already been completed. The disposal programme is also underway. Group capital expenditure will be reduced considerably over the next few years: Capital investment in property, plant and equipment is to amount to €5 billion at the maximum in 2013, and to amount around €4 to 5 billion in the following years. In addition, RWE has launched a total of €1 billion in new efficiency improvements, to be implemented by 2014.”

For the time being the company has not outlined any kind of further information about the cuts. They are not saying what kinds of jobs are going to bear the brunt of the losses. They have not said where exactly the job cuts are expected to come from. They have not given any indication of what kind of severance packages, if any, they are looking to give to the thousands of workers that they are going to be putting out of a job in the very near future.

Sadly, this is not only energy company to deal with revenue losses by cutting jobs. For those of you who missed out here is a look at some of earlier cuts to PBS Coals Inc., “It looks like company is hoping to deal with its business without some of its operations. The company is getting ready to cut back on 225 of their workers as they idle one of their facilities in order to cut costs.”