Deutsche Bahn: the EWC negotiates its first ‘European social plan’

Well-known German rail operator Deutsche Bahn is to divide its accounting businesses across three new centers. For Europe, the Global Accounting Shared Service Center Europe will no longer operate from Germany but instead will move to Romania’s capital city, Bucharest. To smooth out the social consequences of this merger/relocation operation the Deutsche Bahn EWC has succeeded in securing an agreement that amounts to a real “European social plan” covering all the employees affected across almost 26 European countries. Deutsche Bahn EWC president, Jörg Hensel agreed to relate this unusual experience as well as the details of the agreement to Planet Labor. Deutsche Bahn EWC hopes to replicate this experience globally.
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Two years of negotiations to achieve a European social plan. It was on 15 October 2013 during an ordinary EWC (set up in 2005) meeting that Deutsche Bahn management officially presented its consolidation and relocation plans for the group’s accounting business. It is also the very day that negotiations with the EWC started: “Deutsche Bahn will make Berlin its German accounting center and Bucharest its European accounting center. The Philippines will operate as the center for all other...

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