Sweden: analysis of the Sony Ericsson negotiated settlement in 2008 to lay off more than 1,100 people

The announcement of redundancies at the Kista site in Sweden. Only in October 2008 did Sony Ericsson officially announce the redundancy of 230 people in Lund and 550 people in Kista. In December 2008, employees were finally notified individually of their redundancy. The company informed them that it would like them to remain at work for three months, in order to complete projects and some of them were invited to sign up to a so-called “retention” programme, under which they accepted to work effectively until the end of March 2009. In the event, although 230 redundancies were announced in Lund, fewer than 170 employees left the company early. In Kista, of the 1,100 people, nearly 900 were made redundant. Only 200 people remain at the site, 150 of whom are research and development personnel.
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were given. The only concrete element on this subject was that Kista would be affected by most of the job reductions, i.e. 75% of the redundancies in Sweden. Following this meeting, an information document called the “Agility Transformation Program” was circulated to all the company’s employees in Sweden. It presented a calendar setting out all of the information meetings, debriefing sessions and individual meetings concerning the procedures of the planned redundancies. This document was also

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