Slovenia: household appliance manufacturer Gorenje, the jewel of the country’s economy, launches a voluntary leave program

Voluntary leaves. Gorenje group employs about 11.600 people according to publicly available information. It intends to cut 400-500 jobs, using soft measures such as retirement or consensual cancellation of employment. Franjo Bobinac, president of the management board, said that Gorenje will need to reconsider dismissals of a larger number of employees (“hard” measures) in case sales remain on the same level as the first two months of 2009. Mr. Bobinac also mentioned that in case the company would decide to dismiss employees due to business reasons, it would need to pay about €2.5 million in severance payment. Instead, the company formed a program of voluntary leaves and, in that respect, addressed to its employees an offer for consensual cancellation of employment contracts. This offer was addressed to those employees who are interested in pursuing further activities as independent entrepreneurs, work in a family business, work on a farm, stay at home, or apply for retirement. The offer for a consensual cancellation was accompanied with an offer for payment of money compensation being higher than the amount of severance payment the employee would be entitled in case of dismissals based on business reasons. Also, Gorenje mentioned potential future cooperation of the leaving employees as business partners in case they would be able to offer any services to Gorenje. After announcement of this offer, the state Employment Service Office and trade unions responded that the employees accepting such offer should be aware of the fact that the consensual cancellation would mean that the employees would not be entitled to unemployment compensation funded from unemployment insurance. As an answer to criticism by HR experts that the company was going to loose its most valuable and needed employees in the crisis, Gorenje explained that it will not accept consensual cancellation of employment contracts with its key employees.