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Staff welfare foundation creates social hardship fund Following the failure of Swissmetal to make substantial progress with the Unia trade union at today's negotiations tackling measures to prevent or alleviate hardship in the event of redundancies, as provided for in the collective labour agreement, the Swissmetal welfare foundation for employees at Reconvilier ("Fondation en faveur du personnel de l'usine Boillat", a legally and financially independent employee benefits foundation that is not connected in any way with business operations) has set up a social hardship fund. During the talks, it emerged that Unia was not prepared to make any financial contribution on its part towards mitigating the impact of the illegal strike at Reconvilier earlier in the year. Since it would be unacceptable to expect the persons affected to wait any longer, said foundation declared its willingness to go it alone, without Unia's involvement.
The fund set up by the foundation is intended to alleviate individual cases of social hardship arising from the illegal strike at the Reconvilier site in February 2006 by providing pragmatic assistance to the tune of no more than CHF 200,000. The amount of support awarded in each case will be based on an assessment of the personal circumstances of the employee in question. The welfare foundation will appoint a suitable person or institution with the task of carrying out these individual assessments, confidentially and in accordance with predefined objective criteria. This step in no way prejudices the legal position adopted by Swissmetal regarding the unlawful nature of the strike. |
