Schlecker closes third of stores
March 24, 2012
More than 11,000 people, most of them women, worked their final shifts on Saturday at the family-owned Schlecker chain of self-service shops – a third of which are being closed for good following the company's insolvency.
"We're doing a proper job to the last minute," Schlecker employee Birgit Strahl told the news agency dpa in Hanover on Saturday morning. "It's like being the captain on a sinking ship. You've got to be the last to leave."
Schlecker specializes in inexpensive cosmetics and cleaning products, and has been a mainstay in German towns for decades. In a bid to restore profitability, the insolvency administrators are closing 2,200 of Schlecker's 5,400 outlets.
Retail experts blame Schlecker's failure to modernize and compete with other chains of German drugstores for the company's problems.
Plan aims to end uncertainty
Strahl and her colleagues, meanwhile, are counting on a government scheme - which has yet to be finalized - to set up a special employment agency for ex-Schlecker employees, paying them two-thirds of their old wages while the agency retrains them or finds them similar retail jobs elsewhere.
The southern state of Baden-Württemberg, where Schlecker is headquartered, complained Saturday that Germany's other 15 states were reluctant to join it in giving financial guarantees to the planned labor unit.
Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Economic Affairs Nils Schmid, from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), urged the other states to provide the needed support. Speaking on German public radio, Schmid reminded listeners that the Schlecker bankruptcy is one of the largest in German history.
Officials said a final decision regarding the agency would be made on Wednesday.
Staff bid farewell
Meanwhile, employees like Angelika Elbershausen dutifully straightened the last five deodorants into a neat row on the nearly bare shelves on Saturday in a doomed Hanover branch.
Some employees are infuriated by the events and fear for the future. Zorica Konschack voiced anger on Saturday from the same Hanover shop.
“It just hit us with this point blank,” she told the news agency dpa.
The insolvency wiped out the investment of elderly founder Anton Schlecker, whose children Lars and Meike had been managing the chain up until the crisis.
Schlecker's insolvency administrators are expected to sell off the company's profitable units.
tm/slk (dpa, afp)