Magyar Telekom has reached an agreement with trade unions on its headcount reduction and other cost efficiency measures for 2013 at the Hungarian operations.
The company plans to make 500 employees redundant in 2013. The majority are expected to leave the company by the end of 2012. This figure does not include – among others – the employment termination of executives and employees retiring. In addition, to achieve further efficiency improvements, organizational restructuring will take place as of January 1st, 2013 and one element of social benefits, the employer contribution to postponed pension fund will be reduced by 25%, as well.
Total severance expenses related to the headcount reduction will be approximately HUF 6.0bn and the majority of these will be accounted for in the fourth quarter of 2012. The agreement with the trade unions also states there will be 4% general increase in the base salary for the parent company employees from April 2013.
Based on these measures, MTEL’s goal is to reduce Total Workforce Management (TWM) related costs excluding severance and capitalized employee expenses by HUF 5.8bn in 2013, compared to 2011, representing 5.6% decline over the two year period. Consequently, in the 5 year period of 2008-2013, TWM related costs excluding severance and capitalized employee expenses and adjusted for technical changes in the TWM cost structure are set to decrease by 18.4%.