Domestic corporations need to become leaner to fight western competition

Major redundancies in large stock exchange listed companies are not far away. The biggest cuts will be made in TPSA where up to 30% of the staff may be laid off over the next few years. According to analysts the company should make 15,000 redundant to shed its bloated workforce and achieve European standards. Leading domestic companies need to rapidly cut costs to meet the challenge from western corporations, while stock exchange analysts believe that many companies are dragging their heels over restructuring employment. Labor costs account for a high proportion of costs in domestic companies. Polish Copper (KGHM), for example, wants to cut costs by making savings in its energy bills, while analysts maintain that its workforce really needs to be slashed from 18,500 down to about 3,000. The banking sector also will have to trim down. BPH PBK is already planning to sack about 4,000 employees by 2003, including 2,300 redundancies this year. In BZ WBK redundancies will reach almost 1,000. (Puls Biznesu, p. 13) P.W