On 31 March, after four months of negotiations, Areva signed its first ‘social contract’ with trade unions. The agreement comes as the French nuclear power giant is faced with significant difficulties and following the refocusing of its operations on the fuel cycle. It is geared towards “turning the page” after a period of voluntary redundancies that has seen staff numbers drop from 42,000 to 36,000 (-13.5%) over the last two years, and rallying staff, according to the human resources director. This “founding agreement” for New Areva includes an intensifying of training efforts, so as to make sure necessary skills are available, and allowing staff to better share in the company’s results. It also makes changes in the area of working time; effectively, the daily rate for engineers and management staff at the company has been increased.
215 working days per year. One of the key aspects of the agreement is that management staff and engineers can, on a voluntary basis, increase the number of days they work per year to 215 (compared to 203 in some companies within the group). For those that currently work at least 10 days less (which is the case in some subsidiaries), an adapted timetable of 209 days was agreed. The group says the changes create greater harmonisation between the regimes at the different companies and increase the
…Do you have information to share with us?