VIENNA, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Austria’s Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a recent law forcing Bank Austria, a unit of Italy’s UniCredit, to pay more than it had originally planned for shifting staff into the state pension system to save costs.
The move announced by Bank Austria in 2015 applied to 3,300 staff. The bank had originally planned on paying 7 percent of each employee’s last salary before the move, multiplied by the duration of their employment. Austria then passed a law imposing the more common rate of 22.8 percent.
Bank Austria has already made provisions of 790 million euros to cover the cost of the higher rate.
“Insofar as the application (to have the law struck down) is admissible, it is not founded,” the court said in its ruling read out by its president, Gerhart Holzinger. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Shadia Nasralla)
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