Greenpeace Worries

The renowned environmental organization Greenpeace focuses on the most crucial worldwide threats to the environment. Its high profile and spectacular campaigns have ensured that Greenpeace remains the most high profile environmental group on the planet.

Greenpeace has offices in 40 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and established its German branch in Hamburg in 1980. Greenpeace has relied mostly on donations and membership fees to maintain its global reach and its ability to the stage protests anywhere in the world.

Now, however, the organization has to cut back on expenses. Greenpeace's German branch, with its annual 40-million-euro ($53 million) budget in donations, will have to tighten its belt -- and cut about three million euros in costs per year.

Income decreases as expenses rise

Managing director Brigitte Behrens has refuted claims that the current financial situation at Greenpeace is a problem of mismanagement.

"No, our donations are stable," Behrens said, "but they're not increasing at the rate our costs are."

Last year alone, the German branch spent hundreds of thousands of euros more than it brought in. As a result, costs will have to be reduced as of 2008 -- and the largest cuts will be in the personnel sector. Works council representative Christiane Sattler said the 217 employees in Hamburg fear for their jobs.

"People aren't in a good mood because it's going to be a tough cut," Sattler said. "We don't yet know who will lose their jobs, and what the concept for 2008 will be. We haven't been given details yet."

Management and the works council plan to have worked out a concept by April next year.

"There's been quite a lot of restructuring on an international level over the past two years, and we at Greenpeace Germany want to more strongly support international campaigns," Brigitte Behrens said. "Our branch, for example, is contributing to a new Greenpeace ship."

The Rainbow Warrior II is expected to cost 15 million euros, and the German branch, said to be the richest, plans to foot about half of that bill.

Job cuts go against philosophy

Works council representative Sattler agreed that after 26 years, it was time for some changes and readjustment.

"Of course we're proud to be part of an international organization," she said. "The organization's international work is especially important; it's just that being told to slash jobs is a bit of a contradiction for an organization that was always big on employee participation."

The organization's values, like fairness and justice, should also apply to employees, Sattler added.