Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems offers to extend no-redundancy pledge

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) troubled IT services arm T-Systems made a pay offer on Thursday that included extending a pledge to refrain from compulsory redundancies by two years.

CEO Adel Al-Saleh recently said he wanted to cut 10,000 jobs in a drive to return T-Systems to profitability and the pay proposal seeks to sweeten that pill by extending a pledge there would be no forced layoffs until the end of 2020.

The company's pay offer runs to the end of 2019 and assumes that T-Systems hits its business targets this year, and foresees a pay rise of 1.6 percent on April 1, 2019, the company said.

"With this offer we are making it clear that we want to find a balance between the needs of the company and the interests of its workers," T-Systems personnel chief Georg Pepping said.

The Verdi services union staged walkouts on Thursday, coinciding with a fourth round of pay talks, in support of its demand for a 5.5 percent raise for 11,000 workers covered by a collective bargaining deal.

(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Elaine Hardcastle)