About 150 workers of Latvia's KVV Liepajas Metalurgs laid off
Xinhua, May 27, 2015 Adjust font size:
About 150 employees of Latvia's KVV Liepajas Metalurgs metallurgy company have been laid off in recent weeks, said Igor Kovalenko, a board member of Ukraine's KVV, the company's new owner.
The KVV representative said that the sacked workers each would be paid 1,000 euros (1,087 U.S. dollars) in wages and compensations.
KVV Liepajas Metalurgs had been scaling down operations and firing workers lately. The company's representatives said last week that KVV Liepajas Metalurgs had to cut production and lay off some 15 percent of the freshly rehired employees because the cost price was too high to make its products competitive.
Speaking to the press after a government meeting on Tuesday, Latvian Economics Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola said that such actions were an indication either of the management's unprofessionalism or attempts to exert pressure on the Latvian government with the aim to secure bigger support.
In November 2013, Liepajas Metalurgs was declared insolvent after it ran into financial trouble. The company was eventually sold to Ukraine's KVV which re-launched the steel plant in March 2015.
Based in the south-western Latvian port city of Liepaja, Liepajas Metalurgs used to be Latvia's leading metallurgical company and a major provider of jobs in Liepaja. Endit