Petrobras Says More Than a Fifth of Employees Agree to Buyout

Brazil's Petrobras said on Friday that more than one in five of its direct employees agreed to leave the company under a buyout program expected to save the financially troubled state-led oil company 33 billion reais ($10.2 billion) by 2020.

 

Under the program, 11,704 employees, 21 percent of Petrobras' 54,951 direct workforce as of July, signed up to quit their jobs or retire early, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is formally known, said in a statement.

 

The total number of employees signed up since April is 97 percent of a job reduction plan that budgeted 4.4 billion reais for the voluntary dismissal of up to 12,000 employees, or an average of 367,000 reais ($113,168) per employee.

 

Petrobras faces rising payments on its nearly $125 billion of debt, the largest in the global oil industry, as well as massive new costs to develop giant offshore oil prospects off the coast of Brazil south of Rio de Janeiro.

 

Meanwhile, it has been battered by a sprawling corruption scandal and a plunge in world oil prices.

 

The number of employees agreeing to the buyout program could rise as the deadline for postmarking written requests was Aug. 31, Petrobras said. Most of Petrobras' direct core employees got their jobs through competitive, civil service-style examinations and have a range of civil service-style rights making them hard to fire.

 

While Petrobras is controlled by the government, most of its stock is held by non-government investors.

 

As of June 30, Petrobras had provisioned 1.2 billion reais for the dismissal program, based on the 4,087 employees who had already agreed to take the buyout. Layoffs under the plan began on June 16 and 2,450 employees have already left their jobs.