Your trusted source

The company BP (British Petroleum) in Azerbaijan has taken up the previously announced mass layoffs of the workers, explaining these with the oil price declines and forced spending cuts in the company, Mirvari Gahramanli, the chairman of the Committee to Protect Oil Industry Workers' Rights in Azerbaijan told the Azerbaijani information portal “Haqqin.az.”

As the article has it, she reported that alongside with the planned layoffs, the company has also set on illegal dismissals of the workers. “So, the workers of the Supply base (ASKO) of the company hadn’t been informed about the dismissal, although the Labour Code states that they had to be given a notice two months before,” the portal reads referring to the words of the Committee chairman.

Mirvari Gahramanli also noted that the complete lists of the illegally dismissed workers are currently being clarified to be followed with a lawsuit against the company BP Azerbaijan, the article reports.

Last year the company BP informed officially that it would spend 1 billion dollars on forced reduction of workplaces the following year, and Bob Dudley, the company CEO noted that the dismissals will also touch the Azerbaijani branch of the company. Although the subsidiary BP Azerbaijan didn’t comment on the situation at the time, it came to be known that the first wave of the staff reduction had taken place and a new one is coming in 2015.

Besides, at the beginning of December, 2014 the Azerbaijani media reported that according to the experts’ opinions, the oil price reduction would bring about spending cuts in the oil companies and their payments, which in its turn would feel on the workers from other sectors in Azerbaijan. To overcome the created situation with minimal losses, some social programs would have to be restricted in the country.