Displaying items by tag: Salary
Portugal: Workers from Cimpor, along with those from its subsidiaries Ciarga Argamassas, Serviços and Sacopor, will participate in a three-day strike from 16 – 19 April 2024. The Portuguese Federation of Construction, Ceramics and Glass Trade Unions (FEVICCOM) announced that strike rallies are scheduled for 8am daily near the entrances to cement plants in Souselas, Alhandra and Loulé.
The workers are demanding an 8% salary increase in 2024, with a minimum of €200, a 37-hour work week starting 1 January 2025, annual bonuses, shift work compensation and public holidays in continuous work regimes. Cimpor management previously raised salaries by 4.5% at the start of 2024. This is above the inflation rate in Portugal and twice the increase seen by the civil service. Cimpor added that it had previously increased salaries above the rate of inflation in previous years.
India: The India Cements will pay each of its 500 cement plant workers an additional US$736/yr, effective retroactively from the start of the 2023 Indian financial year on 1 April 2022. This will subsequently rise by up to another US$736/yr from the start of the 2026 financial year. The Hindu BusinessLine News has reported that the move is the result of talks with workers' unions. The India Cements additionally agreed to pay a total US$202,000/yr in premiums on medical insurance policies for all cement plant employees.
The India Cements operates 10 cement facilities in India.
HeidelbergCement launches short-time working
21 April 2020Germany: Staff of HeidelbergCement in Germany will be employed on a ‘short-time’ basis, with hours reductions of up to 100%. HeidelbergCement says that it agreed upon the measure with employee representative bodies.
HeidelbergCement’s supervisory board and management board members have waived 20% of their fixed salaries in the second quarter of 2020 due to the financial impacts of the coronavirus outbreak.
Breedon Group announces closure of Irish plants
02 April 2020Ireland: UK-based Breedon Group has announced the suspension of operations at its 0.7Mt/yr integrated Kinnegad plant in County Westmeath and all other sites in Ireland. Breedon Group guaranteed 100% to pay to all Irish and UK staff to 30 April 2020.
Two non-executive directors of Breedon Group, Susie Farnon and Peter Cornell, have taken retirement.
FLSmidth reports coronavirus disruptions
24 March 2020Denmark: FLSmidth has reported ‘increasing disruptions to customers’ and its own operations’ and higher costs due to ‘more complex logistics and a weaker fixed cost absorption’ following the coronavirus outbreak. It says that around half of employees are working remotely.
FLSmidth continues its business improvement initiatives launched in 2019 and has implemented a capital expenditure (CAPEX) reduction, salary adjustment postponement and hiring freezes.
Kenya: East African Portland Cement (EAPC) is relying on a US$100m land sale to the government to remain solvent. The company is in discussions to sell over 14,000 acres of land to the newly established Special Economy Zones Authority funds, according to the East African newspaper. The cement producer has seen its production halted, cement stocks depleted and staff salaries delayed over the last two months. It reported a loss of US$9.58m in the second half of 2017 from a loss of US$2.45m in the same period in 2016.
South Africa: PPC has announced that when the next round of PPC salary adjustments takes effect in October 2014, company CEO Ketso Gordhan would earn only 40 times more than his lowest-paid worker.
When Gordhan took over as CEO in January 2013 he was earning 120 times more than his lowest-paid worker. However, the company's drive to reduce the earnings differential had reduced this to a multiple of 48. This followed Gordhan's US$96,370 pay cut in October 2013, while the remuneration of his top 60 managers was frozen so that the wages of the cement maker's 1200 lowest-paid workers could be raised.
Gordhan said that he would not take a pay increase in October 2014 and PPC's other executives would be awarded increases of about 4.5 - 5%, less than the usual 6.5%. This would allow the minimum total pay package at PPC to be hiked to nearly US$1060. According to Gordhan, the 40-times multiple was seen by many as 'a justifiable spread.'
The company's new black economic empowerment (BEE) deal, which gives employees 12% share ownership in the company, could generate as much as US$193m for PPC's employees over five years if share price targets of US$5.78/share are reached.
The company's new BEE deal is a restructure of its 2008 deal, which was designed around broad-based trusts but was complicated and costly. The new BEE deal involves the issue of ordinary shares to the PPC Phakamani Trust and the issue of a new class of perpetual preference shares, to be used to raise capital to fund the unwinding.