A five-week strike at Europe's top telecommunications company when Deutsche Telekom agreed with the Ver.di union to terms in a large-scale cost-cutting program that would see employees' salaries drop and their work weeks lengthened. The agreement would cut worker's salaries 6.5%, down from the proposed 9%, while guaranteeing the company would not fire the employees before 2012. The agreement affects about 50,000 Deutsche Telekom workers, or about one third of its total German workforce.
See "Deutsche Telekom, Union Agree on Service Workers' Pay", Kenneth Wong, Bloomberg News, June 19, 2007