DFDS sends 600 employees home, who are paid through an arrangement similar to working time. Yet, the company does not rule out having to cut jobs in future as a result of the corona crisis.
CEO Torben Carlsen announced this in an interview with Danish ShippingWatch. The arrangement applies to the vast majority of DFDS’ employees on the Oslo-Copenhagen route. The shipping company has had to discontinue this service until at least 1 April.
DFDS uses a package on which employers and employees have made agreements with the Danish Government. This amounts to 75 per cent compensation of labour costs. According to Carlsen, without this arrangement the company would have had to lay off some of its employees.
IJmuiden
He does not rule out the possibility of people being fired outside of Denmark. In particular, he mentioned the connection between IJmuiden and Newcastle as a route where the company faces ‘constraints’. According to Carlsen, passenger transport, which is much harder hit than freight transport, accounts for only fifteen per cent of its turnover, which last year was 2.2 billion euros.
According to Carlsen, freight volumes show ‘no significant change yet’. He did not want to say how much turnover DFDS has now lost as a result of the global virus outbreak.
This article first appeared (in Dutch) on Nieuwsblad Transport, a sister publication of SWZ|Maritime.
