Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Dow Chemical, a US producer of speciality materials, has announced a restructuring plan in France which includes the closure of its R&D centre at Sophia Antipolis (Alpes-Maritimes) by the end of 2018 resulting in 130 job losses. The decision was confirmed to employees during a works' council. This announcement is part of the restructuring of the group's activities resulting from the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont into three separate companies specialising respectively in materials chemistry, speciality chemicals and agrochemicals. Under the pressure of activist investors, the group wants to reduce its costs by $3 billion.
DowDuPont employs 130 people in the technology park of Sophia Antipolis, including 80 for R & D and technical support activities and about fifty in the field of agrosciences. 'The R & D activities will be redistributed and proposals for reemployment on other sites, particularly in France and Switzerland, will be submitted to employees", said the president of Dow France.
For the trade union CFDT, 'the closure of the site and its transfer to Switzerland are incoherent, incomprehensible and unacceptable". The decision is difficult to accept as Dow has invested more than €2 million in 2015 to renovate its site. The investment was perceived at the time as a guarantee of sustainability of the site. A central works council is scheduled for January to begin discussions on the redistribution of posts. As the reemployment proposals will mainly be in Switzerland, it is foreseeable that many employees will refuse proposals to move and will be dismissed. Two reorganisations were recorded in the ERM Database in 2009 (196 job cuts) and in 2007 (171 job cuts).
Eurofound (2017), Dow France, Closure in France, factsheet number 92873, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/92873.
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