Fewer jobs lost at Monsanto thanks to shorter working week

Within three years of October 1998, staff at Monsanto in Belgium will work just 33.6 hours a week. The shorter working week, coupled with an early retirement scheme for many employees, will dramatically reduce the consequences of a drastic restructuring of the company. The initial announcement referred to the loss of 328 jobs, but 128 jobs will be saved by the new measures - a result the trade unions have had to fight hard to achieve.

Recently, Bayer, the giant German chemical multinational, announced that it intended to close irrevocably the ABS plant of its Monsanto division in Antwerp, Belgium. The ABS plant, which produces synthetic materials, is located on the Monsanto site and employs Monsanto staff. At the time of the announcement, Monsanto employed a total of 1,074 people in Belgium, 328 of whom worked at ABS. The decision by Bayer meant that all ABS employees would be laid off.

Trade unions immediately decided to start negotiations with Monsanto. Their priority concern was to maintain employment, but a secondary consideration was to develop an accompanying social plan if redundancies were, in fact, inevitable. After seven days of tough negotiations, the unions reached an agreement with management on a shorter working week without pay cuts.

The agreement stipulates that after the closure of ABS and from 1 January 2002, Monsanto will introduce a working week of 33.6 hours (33 hours and 36 minutes). This overall reduction of working hours creates room for job restructuring so that 128 of the 328 planned redundancies will be cancelled. Workers on variable shifts will benefit from a new shift system. The current system of early, late and night shifts over a period of seven days each will be replaced by a three- or four-day cycle. At the same time, a fifth shift will be introduced.

The shorter working week at Monsanto will mean extra days off. The new system will also benefit other workers besides those on variable shifts. Overall, the Monsanto labour force will have 16 to 18 extra days off annually. Furthermore, the shorter working week will not lead to pay cuts. The measure is to be financed in the context of the collective agreements running until 2002. In other words, money will be made available that could otherwise have been used for wage rises.

The agreement between the unions and senior management also involves an elaborate "social plan" including an early retirement scheme. Only workers aged 55 and over - approximately 130 people - will be compulsorily retired. To achieve the required total of 200 redundancies, some employees in the age group from 52 to 55 may be asked to take voluntary early retirement. Wider margins have been applied in the calculation of early retirement pensions, and the same goes for the additional benefits agreed under the terms of the current collective agreement. Monthly payments under the scheme will be indexed.

The unions are pleased that jobs have been saved thanks to the introduction of a shorter working week, but also see a more negative side to the agreement. They are unhappy that managerial staff have been excluded from the agreement. Increasingly, companies "promote" production workers and office staff to management positions. In the chemicals industry, the usual approach is thereby to remove office staff from the fixed salary scale. In exchange, these employees are then reportedly expected to put in far more hours than they would normally expect under the terms of the collective agreement. Arguably, the only reward they can look forward to is the occasional bonus. The unions will seek to make sure that middle management at Monsanto will not be adversely affected by the organisational side-effects of the shorter working week, by being forced to accept an increased workload.