BRATISLAVA, July 22, (WEBNOVINY) — One of the largest construction companies in Slovakia, Vahostav-SK, a.s. Zilina will lay off five hundred employees, which is about a quarter of its staff members. The collective layoff, planned from August 8 to January 31 of 2011, will affect blue-collar workers as well as white-collar employees in charge of technical and administrative issues, informed the assistant to the company director general and CEO Andrej Thiel.
The joint-stock company Vahostav-SK decided to reduce the number of employees because it no longer needs so many of them due to the persisting decline in demand for construction works in the Slovak construction market posted during the past two years and because of the delay in highway construction, explained Mr. Thiel.
Vahostav-SK has already informed the Zilina-based Labor Office about its plans. According to Mr. Thiel, the construction company will observe the Slovak labor laws, especially the Labor Code and the effective collective agreement with trade unions inked by the company. Director General Jan Kato already announced that the company might lay off 500 of its 1,800 employees on June 17 at a Bratislava-held conference dedicated to the situation in the Slovak construction sector.
According to unofficial information available to SITA, the second largest building company in Slovakia, Doprastav, a.s., reportedly decided to lower the number of employees, as well; however, the firm has not confirmed this information to date. Doprastav’s top representatives mentioned a plan to dismiss 1,000 of 3,200 staff members at the same conference. The final decision was conditioned by a potential halt of the first PPP package for the construction of D1 section between Martin and Presov. The director of Vahostav stated similar reasons.
The two companies are members of an international consortium that was selected to build five D1 sections between Martin and Presov (75 kilometers). Doprastav is the main member of the consortium with a 30-percent stake. Construction costs of the project reached EUR 2.4 billion, but the PPP package has yet to been financially closed, although the deadline was postponed several times.
SITA
