WKÖ postpones AMS notification for 200 employees to late July

Of the total 800 jobs at the WKÖ headquarters, 200 are to be eliminated. This affects one in four jobs at the location. The chamber justified the step with a financial necessity and the "decided levy reduction."

Reform independent of the Court of Audit

The WKÖ leadership stressed that the reform is not due to poor work by employees. "The performance, commitment, and professionalism of colleagues would have contributed significantly to the fact that the Federal Economic Chamber successfully fulfilled its tasks in recent years," the letter stated. "And it certainly does not happen because employees have done poor work."

The chamber further explained that the reform takes place "in response to financial necessities and the decided levy reduction and not because of the independent audit carried out by the Court of Audit." This also rejected speculation that the job cuts were a direct consequence of the Court of Audit report.

According to the WKÖ's plans, resources are to be concentrated in the future "even more consistently on our core business and our statutory mandate." "The changes now necessary are solely an expression of the strategic realignment and the necessary decision to concentrate our resources in the future even more consistently on our core business and our statutory mandate," Schultz and Danninger wrote.

Impact on the workforce

In concrete terms, this means that individual departments will not continue or will only continue in a modified form. These include "for example, the Innovation and Digitalization departments as well as Data Management and Analysis," as the letter states.

The chamber announced that it would regularly inform staff about the reform process. Focal points in the future are to be on interest representation, foreign trade, and those services that provide the greatest added value for member companies.

Postponement rather than all-clear

By postponing the AMS notification by around two weeks, the WKÖ gains time to provide initial information to affected employees before the formal notification. However, the postponement does not change the scale of the cuts. The decision is part of the context of a longer-discussed reduction in the levy, which is intended to financially relieve the chamber's mandatory members.

For employees, the postponement primarily means an extension of the phase of uncertainty. Personal conversations are only to take place at the end of August, in which the individual situation will be clarified. Until then, a one-month blocking period applies, during which the AMS is usually not informed about open positions.