At least 250 people working for national construction company Somague are to be sacked, write business newspapers.
Diário Económico quotes a source from the company saying Somague has suffered from a “continuous and significant drop in activity” – meaning it has too many employees for too little work.
According to Dinheiro Vivo, staff were informed of the decision on Monday morning (October 5) at a hotel in Lisbon.
“Somague is a company with over 2,000 workers which it would like to keep employed. In fact, I was told today that if there was enough construction work, Somague wouldn’t have to sack these people,” said Albano Ribeiro, the president of the construction workers’ union.
He added that it is “unbearable” for the company to keep people on their books without work “when they represent a monthly cost of over €150,000”.
He also explained that Somague is willing to pay compensation “above what is required by law” and will focus on laying off older employees who can “benefit from unemployment subsidy before receiving their pensions”.
The company employed 2,330 people at the end of 2014 – 980 of them in Portugal and 815 in Angola.
By MICHAEL BRUXO [email protected]
