Employment, Latvia, Legislation, Railways, Transport

"In our opinion, the press report is coinciding with the launch of an opposition MP's election campaign, and it's aim is to discredit the company and cause losses to the Latvian economy in order to win votes in the 2017 local elections. The government, the city council and the shareholders support the company as it makes investments and looks for new orders," the DLRR management said in a statement.

The company's management also noted that over the past couple of years, DLRR with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency's support has been investing in upgrading its machine tools, the plan's renovation and infrastructure. The new equipment has been installed and launched, while the old one is phased out. The new equipment and technologies do not require so many workers, so DLRR has laid of some of its employees.

The DLRR management also explained that the workers were fired as repairs of diesel train engines decreased, and that the reorganization affected the company's management as well. "There have been no mass layoffs at DLRR and we are not planning them," the company said.

Latvian public radio reported on Monday that more than 80 workers have been fired from DLRR since March and that there are concerns about looming mass layoffs due to the company's optimization plans.

DLRR is the largest company in the Baltic countries specializing in repairs to and modernization of locomotives and rolling stock and manufacturing spare parts for trains. It is also the largest company in Daugapils.

Valerijs Kononovs, the head of the Daugavpils branch of the State Revenue Service, confirmed that DLRR has fired a number of people, but it cannot be called a mass firing yet.

As reported, consolidates sales of Daugavpils Lokomotivju Remonta Rupnica (DLRR), the train engine repair group based in the south-eastern Latvian city of Daugavpils, shrank 37% in the first quarter of this year to EUR 2.3 million. The group completed the three-month period in 2016 with a loss of EUR 0.96 million compared to loss worth EUR 0.923 million in the first quarter of last year.

The big losses are due to the fact that the company was not provided with orders to full capacity. In the first quarter the group implemented costs optimization, reduction in the number of employees and gave up unprofitable activities.

Consolidated net sales of DLRR last year was EUR 19.2 million, up four% from 2014. DLRR finished the year with losses of EUR 2.7 million, which is considerably more when compared to the losses the company sustained in 2014 – EUR 1.1 million.