DT Is Not Giving Up On Salary Cuts Despite Strike

On Thursday, Deutsche Telekom announced that it will not give up its plan to cut costs under pressure from the strike.

On Thursday, the German telecommunications operator Deutsche Telekom announced that it will not give up its disputed plan to cut costs under pressure from the a warning strike that the workers organized.

The program includes transferring 50 thousand workers to lower paid jobs in the services branches which is necessary for DT to stay competitive, and is in the interests of the workers, said the director of the company Rene Obermann at the annual shareholder meeting.

This is why he called upon the workers to consider the proposal of the board, which the powerful union of workers, Ver.di, rejected on Wednesday.

Faced with a great loss of subscribers in the sector of fixed telephone services, DT plans on cutting salaries by nine percent and extending the work week to a total of 38 hours, and in return they guarantee their workplace until 2011.

The union said that they will accept a longer working week, but not the planned pay cut. Around 15 thousand DT workers stopped work on Thursday in a number of strikes, and the union leaders will discuss the possibility of a general strike on Friday.