Petrom to lay off 3,000 employees starting February

Petrom, the biggest private employer on the local market, will make 3,000 people redundant throughout the country starting February, which accounts for about 10% of the total number of its employees.

"The notice about this step taken by Petrom was initially sent to the agency in Bucharest and then to the agency in Prahova. It is not yet known how many of the 3,000 announced by Petrom will be made redundant in each county," stated the representatives of the County Employment Agency (AJOFM) Prahova, thus confirming the information published by ZF at the beginning of this month.

Petrom officials said back then that the redundancies were part of a more extensive restructuring programme that the company had started at the time of its privatisation and were not in connection with the current economic situation.

According to the officials of the company, there may be layoffs caused by the crisis, but they will not be in the range of thousands in any way.Petrom said the 3,000 redundancies had been negotiated with the unions.

At the time of privatisation Petrom had more than 50,000 employees. According to the privatisation contract, it should have kept 44,236 in 2005, with the number to reach 24,753 people in 2008.

On the other hand, according to Petrom's reports, the company had 43,546 employees in 2005 and 26,397 in 2007. Last year the number of employees went up by about 10,000 compared with 2007 as a result of the takeover of Petromservice, which means that Petrom has the right, under the privatisation contract, to cut about 10,000 jobs.

Petrom ended the first nine months of last year with a net profit of 2.29 billion RON (622 million euros), 48% higher than in the same time of 2007, but benefited from a favourable context in the first half, when the oil price reached 150 dollars/barrel. Meanwhile the price has gone down to 40 dollars/barrel. The company posted 13 billion RON (3.52 billion euros) turnover, up 50%.

Ziarul Financiar