DAS Luxemburg to let 15 people go

DAS Luxemburg, an insurance company specialised in legal protection, is to lay off 15 employees, according to ALEBA, the union for the finance sector. 

The company, which has had a presence in Strassen, Luxembourg, for nearly 50 years, employs 25 people.

According to ALEBA, the company's headquarters in Germany decided to offload its Luxembourg client portfolio to Allianz Luxemburg.

The deal will see 15 workers losing their jobs, as Allianz will only take on 10 people from the legal and claims departments. 

ALEBA will be negotiating the social plans for the laid-off workers.

Laurent Mertz, secretary general, said that, considering how well the insurance sector was doing in Luxembourg and how long some of the employees had worked for DAS, it was the social responsibility of the company to accept a social plan of "very high quality". 

"In 2017," he said, "we negotiated five social plans, which impacted around 200 employees. [This year has] just started, and we are already confronted with a new plan.

"It's incomprehensible as the employer organisations of the financial sector brag about their good or very good results. It's simple – everywhere one seeks to keep increasing profit, no matter what the human impact is."  

Mertz argued that, while the finance sector needed to reinvent itself and find solutions to technological challenges, at the moment, the trend seemed to be one of dismissing employees to supress costs and stay competitive in the short term. 

The 10,000-member union will be renogtiating a new collective agreement for employees working in the insurance sector in Luxembourg.