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Innsbruck (OTS) – At Swarovski, much, if not all, is up for grabs before today’s lottery day. The largest industrial group in Tyrol has to reform massively, but the heart and brain of the company must not tremble at the Wattens site.
Today’s shareholders’ meeting at Swarovski – the extended family has more than 200 members and around 75 voting owners – will likely be extremely turbulent. This is ensured by massive job cuts, restructuring of structures, the planned conversion into a public limited company including a possible IPO and the fear that the headquarters will be moved to Switzerland and then another clear logging will take place. in Wattens. Not only the workforce vehemently criticizes, but also politics and a not so small part of the family, who cannot and does not want to participate in this course, which in many ways also represents a break with lived tradition. A public dispute that has never happened before in the often secret company.
In 1895, the Bohemian immigrant Daniel Swarovski laid the foundation for what would later become the world-famous crystal company with the first machine for the industrial production of glass jewelry. Daniel Swarovski II As the most influential leader of the grandchildren’s generation, he built a large voluntary social system, for example, with an extensive company apartment settlement program for company workers. Like in almost no other company, for a long time employees always saw themselves as part of “their” company and almost as members of the family. And despite its global orientation (more than 30,000 employees worldwide), the company has always been closely linked to the Tyrol.
The group, which has always been considered a role model in this country, has had to overcome severe crises in the past, for example in the 1970s or later during the great bankruptcy of Zale in the US. For years Extremely cheap competition has made Swarovski difficult to handle, especially when it comes to crystal components. The crown crisis, with a drop in demand and stores that have been closed for a long time, has led Swarovski into massive trouble.
One thing is indisputable: the group must vigorously rebuild its structures and also save if it does not want to endanger its existence. And the clan’s embedded family decision-making and power structures should have changed long ago. But what’s not possible at all is the way employees are left completely in the dark about the future. Wattens, as the past and current administrations have often emphasized, is the “brain and heart” of the group. Ripping it off and relocating it abroad would be self-destruction.
Queries and contact:
Tyrolean newspaper
0512 5354 5101
chief editor@tt.com
