Curio removes support functions
The Brabant secondary vocational education institution Curio is going to reorganize in the support functions. The formation must be reduced from 450 FTE in 2020 to 366 full-time jobs in 2023. The unions and Curio are still negotiating a social plan. The reorganization will take two years.
Picture: Type tank
At the end of March, Curio announced that it would be reorganizing. 'Curio wants to focus even more on education, which is why support is being made more effective and efficient', the institution wrote on his website. The reorganization is necessary because fewer young people will eventually enroll in VMBO and MBO courses, a spokesperson explains by e-mail. "The decrease in the number of pupils and students in regular education has financial consequences for us. Income is decreasing and that means that we also have to reduce our costs. A challenging but difficult task."
Social plan
A large part of the jobs will disappear as colleagues retire and temporary contracts expire. The unions are also discussing a social plan. AObMBO district director Anita Duchateau negotiates on behalf of the union. “It is still a matter of coffee grounds to see if there will be any forced redundancies,” she says.
It is still a matter of time to see whether there will be forced redundancies
According to Duchateau, there are enough schemes in the social plan that encourage voluntary departure. “For example, when I was 62 years old and worked in support at Curio, I would take a good look at the plan. The faster you respond, the better it is for you financially. I can imagine there is enthusiasm for it. If there are enough, you can avoid redundancies. In any case, we try to guide employees from job to job as much as possible and include agreements for retraining, for example. I find the social plan attractive for employees. So there is a good chance that after two years, few people will really become unemployed.”
In our view, a reorganization is necessary and inevitable in order to realize the renewal of the support and the cutbacks
The Curio spokesperson confirms this. "We cannot yet say how many and whether people will be made redundant. With the social plan we try to prevent this as much as possible and to limit negative legal consequences for employees." It will only become clear in 2023 whether the social plan and natural turnover have reduced the formation sufficiently.
Phases
The social plan includes a voluntary phase and a forced phase. Both phases together last two years. The plan contains agreements for, for example, orientation on your own company, retraining, an incentive scheme for leavers and an earlier retirement scheme.
According to Duchateau, the reorganization is mainly taking place among the education management personnel (OBP) and not among the instructors who have teaching duties. This concerns the employees who, for example, do intakes and maintain student administration, policy officers, telephone operators/receptionists or employees at the documentation center.
Exactly how many FTEs will disappear for which job category can the AObdistrict driver do not say. “We even asked the board to visualize that with color so that you can see exactly where the pain is. You want to know that per function. The works council must also be aware of this, otherwise it cannot issue advice. For example, the works council must agree to the positions that will remain and the number of them.” The board of Curio has announced that it is waiting for the works council's advice on the reorganization plan.
Thinking
Duchateau hopes to be out by July 8. “We also hope that we will be able to present the social plan to the members before the summer holidays. With the green light, employees can really start thinking about the agreements in the plan.”
Yesterday Curio informed the employees about the progress of the social plan.
