It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. And total­ly off my radar. Arva­to’s munic­i­pal full-ser­vice office/data mass out-sourc­ing divi­sion is just a small part of its glob­al busi­ness too. And in York­shire it’s a pub­lic-pri­vate “part­ner­ship” of cor­po­rate cud­dling and munch­ing that’s been going on for years:

York­shire Post
Tories accused over jobs promise

18 April, 2007

A ROW has bro­ken out after claims that hun­dreds of jobs promised in the East Rid­ing 18 months ago have so far failed to mate­ri­alise.

The Lib­er­al Democ­rats have accused the Con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship on East Rid­ing Coun­cil of fail­ing to come up with the goods, fol­low­ing the 2005 deal with media ser­vices giant arva­to AG.

But the Con­ser­v­a­tives have hit back, say­ing the Lib Dems are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to hang onto their seats in the May elec­tions and they are con­fi­dent the jobs will come with­in the four-year dead­line set at the time.

The 14m-a-year deal between East Rid­ing Coun­cil and the Ger­man media and busi­ness provider saw 500 coun­cil staff trans­fer across to arva­to.

As part of the eight-year deal, arva­to, the ser­vice arm of giant media group Ber­tels­mann AG, is con­tract­ed to cre­ate 600 jobs at the end of four years.

The deal has also involved a joint ven­ture com­pa­ny being set up – with the East Rid­ing Coun­cil own­ing 20 per cent of the shares – to sell ser­vices to oth­er local author­i­ties and pri­vate com­pa­nies, with the aim of employ­ing hun­dreds more staff.

At the time, the deci­sion to hand over the ser­vices was con­tro­ver­sial.

But unions rep­re­sent­ing the 500 staff, includ­ing rev­enue, ICT, cus­tomer ser­vice cen­tres and occu­pa­tion­al health, backed the move, which pro­tect­ed salaries, terms and con­di­tions.

How­ev­er the Lib Dems are ques­tion­ing why no new jobs have been cre­at­ed so far.

Lib Dem Leader Coun David Nolan, who rep­re­sents Willer­by and Kirk Ella, said: “The Con­ser­v­a­tives promised 600 new jobs as a result of this con­tract.

“Over 6,000 unem­ployed East Rid­ing res­i­dents are seek­ing work and these jobs could make a dif­fer­ence to their lives and their fam­i­lies.

“All they have had is glitz and spin but no jobs.

“Eigh­teen months after the promis­es were made, our ques­tion to the Con­ser­v­a­tive coun­cil leader is very sim­ple: ‘Where are the jobs you promised?’.”

...

Arva­to man­ag­ing direc­tor Rain­er Maj­cen said he was “a bit per­plexed” by the Lib Dems’ crit­i­cism so ear­ly in the project.

They were in a bid­ding process with inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies and were look­ing at office/administration type jobs, which could include a call cen­tre ele­ment, he said.

“We are absolute­ly con­fi­dent we will cre­ate these 600 jobs,” he said.

No doubt the job sit­u­a­tion worked out for every­one! Those 600 or so new jobs will show up some­where.

Not Ber­tels­mann, but...

Vf

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/world/europe/german-magazine-said-to-glorify-nazis-will-cease-publication.html?_r=3&

Ger­man Mag­a­zine Said to Glo­ri­fy Nazis Will End
By JACK EWING
Pub­lished: Sep­tem­ber 13, 2013

FRANKFURT — The Ger­man pub­lish­er of InTouch and numer­ous oth­er mag­a­zines said Fri­day that it would stop pub­lish­ing a pulp mag­a­zine crit­i­cized by an Amer­i­can Jew­ish group for hero­ic por­tray­als of Ger­man war crim­i­nals in World War II.

Bauer Media Group, based in Ham­burg, said it would stop pub­lish­ing Der Landser, which said it was sim­ply offer­ing tales of ordi­nary sol­diers in World War II but was the sub­ject of com­plaints by the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter in Los Ange­les, which said the mag­a­zine pro­mot­ed flat­ter­ing sto­ries about offi­cers and units asso­ci­at­ed with the Holo­caust.

The deci­sion by Bauer was a major vic­to­ry for the Wiesen­thal Cen­ter. The mag­a­zine had sur­vived numer­ous chal­lenges since being found­ed in the 1950s by a vet­er­an of the Luft­waffe, the Ger­man air force before and dur­ing World War II. Der Landser had long been at the ful­crum of a debate about how to bal­ance free speech with efforts to erad­i­cate the neo-Nazi move­ment and per­sis­tent anti-Semi­tism.

Nazi pro­pa­gan­da is ille­gal in Ger­many, as is denial of the Holo­caust. The Wiesen­thal Cen­ter said Der Landser glo­ri­fied the actions of units that were asso­ci­at­ed with war crimes, while ignor­ing atroc­i­ties.

One recent issue was devot­ed to the exploits in Greece of an S.S. unit that was part of Hitler’s per­son­al body­guard corps. As Der Landser por­trayed it, Greek vil­lagers were grate­ful to have been con­quered.

Bauer “had no alter­na­tive giv­en the over­whelm­ing evi­dence,” Rab­bi Mar­vin Hier, founder of the Wiesen­thal Cen­ter, said Fri­day by tele­phone from Los Ange­les. In a study, the cen­ter had doc­u­ment­ed how offi­cers and units por­trayed by the mag­a­zine were involved in mass mur­der of Jews or par­ti­sans and oth­er atroc­i­ties.

Rab­bi Hier said he thought Bauer Media had tak­en the com­plaint seri­ous­ly. “They did the right thing,” he said. “They got out in front of the mat­ter.”

In a state­ment, Bauer Media said a review by an out­side lawyer that it hired found that the mag­a­zine did not vio­late Ger­man law. But the com­pa­ny decid­ed to close the pub­li­ca­tion any­way in line with its “port­fo­lio strat­e­gy.”

Der Landser orig­i­nal­ly drew its read­er­ship from unre­pen­tant Ger­man war vet­er­ans, but as that read­er­ship died off the mag­a­zine became pop­u­lar with right-wing extrem­ists, law enforce­ment author­i­ties said.

How Europe’s biggest media com­pa­ny infil­trat­ed the EU
How Ber­tels­mann mix­es busi­ness, phil­an­thropy and Con­ti­nen­tal pol­i­tics.

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-inc-bertelsmann-business-philanthropy-politics/