Meeting of the European Works Council of DB AG in Potsdam

The topic that dominated the European Works Council was the project for setting up Shared Service Centers (SSC) for accounting. The aim of the project is to set up a global accounting system across all business units. The DB Group's accounting activities are to be concentrated at four locations around the world.

In the Group Works Council's and the EWC's joint working group on the topic of SSC, the EWC is represented by Fred van Oort (Netherlands) and Dany de Borger (Belgium).

The European Works Council established in its meeting that cutting jobs and moving work to be concentrated in low-wage countries was not acceptable in its view.

In the information and consultation session with Central Management, too, the discussion on the planned setting up of Shared Service Centers for accounting was a main focus. The EWC made it clear in the meeting that the implementation of this project would meet with considerable resistance on the part of employees. The DB Group's target of becoming a top employer would hardly be achieved with this project, it said. The jobs of employees, some of whom had been working in the Group for 30 or 40 years, were jeopardised by these plans. It commented that the standardisation of accounting activities wished for by the company could also be realised without centralisation, thanks to modern technology.

The EWC resolved to clearly formulate its opposition to the SSC project in a letter to the Management Board of Deutsche Bahn AG. Moreover, it resolved that the individual countries, too, should use the respective national legislative options to receive information on the national project status and become active where appropriate.

Further topics discussed in the meeting included the general, personnel and financial situation in the DB Group and DB Arriva's strategy.

The DB Schenker Rail and DB Arriva/Regional Transport working groups met in advance of the EWC meeting, also in Potsdam. The DB Schenker Logistics working group had already met on 19 and 20 September 2013 in Bucharest, Romania.

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The European Works Council of Deutsche Bahn AG currently has 45 members from 20 countries.

The next meeting of the EWC is expected to be held in Berlin from 25 to 27 February 2014.