Amsterdam lays off 900 workers

The City of Amsterdam plans to lay off 900 of the 12,900 city officials in the next 2 years, but plans to follow a natural flow where possible, rather than rigorously cutting jobs, announced alderman Eric van der Burg of and organization Thursday in the City Council. The reforms are no surprise. 26 municipal services will be combined into 4 clusters and the district boards will be transformed into board committees. Van der Burg stresses he wants to avoid redundancies where possible, but on management level can not be avoided since in the end 34 of the 47 directors will have to be let go. The detailed plan was presented to the works council on Thursday.