2023-11-27 18:37:27
Telefónica conveys to the unions its intention to apply several employment regulation files (ERE) to cut its workforce in Spain. This Monday, the operator and the company committee held the second meeting of the negotiating table for the new collective agreement and the conditions for an employment adjustment in the Spanish market. And at the meeting the group confirmed that the route it chooses to accelerate worker departures will be an ERE, according to union sources and the company itself.
Telefónica had already anticipated its intention to reduce the size of its workforce in Spain, but had not revealed the formula with which it intended to execute it. Since 2016, the company had executed three voluntary leave plans with compensation and social benefits, but now it intends to articulate several ERE in its large Spanish subsidiaries (Telefónica de España, Telefónica Móviles España and Telefónica Soluciones de Informática y Comunicación de España).
At the moment, no figures
The company’s objective in principle would be to reduce the workforce between 2,500 and 3,000 jobs, but the management of the operator does not confirm it and this Monday it did not give any figure of departures to the unions. A data on estimated job cuts that the company can legally only provide to the negotiation tables of each of the ERE in each Spanish subsidiary, which will soon be established.
It would be the fourth workforce adjustment that the company has applied since 2016. Since then the operator has cut some 11,900 jobs in Spain through three plans for individual suspension of the employment relationship (PSI), with a cost for the group of about 6,800 million euros for payments to facilitate departures (maintaining seconded workers up to 80% of their salary until age 65 and payment of Social Security and medical insurance contributions until their retirement).
The unions represented at Telefónica had been demanding that the company’s management clarify the workforce adjustment that was anticipated weeks ago and that the group confirmed to the works council at its meeting last week. The unions had shown their concern about the messages launched by the company’s management on Investor Day, last November 8, pointing out their intention to obtain “efficiencies that help reduce the cost structure” or to “adapt the size the organisation”.
Departures conditioned to the new agreement
In its meeting last week, the first between the company and unions, the management of the telecom company agreed to at least negotiate the works council’s demand that the new collective agreement have a duration of three years, from 2024 to 2026, covering the same period of the new strategic plan presented by the group three weeks ago.
UGT, the majority union in the operator, proposes as a condition that “any exit plan is linked to the signing of a new agreement of related companies with a minimum duration of 3 years that protects the staff and their working and economic conditions.” The union also demands that employees affected by future ERE have exit conditions “similar” to the incentive leave plans applied in previous years.
In the previous labor adjustments applied by Telefónica, the age of the worker has prevailed as a fundamental criterion for offering incentivized departure. On this occasion, the company’s objective is that the central reason for the sick leave is focused on activities that are going to be automated or that will become extinct in the coming years, such as the definitive closure of the old copper network scheduled for next April.
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UGT demands the paralysis of workers’ movements proposed by the reorganization of its customer service (whose centerpiece is the 1004 telephone number) and by the closure of more than 100 corporate headquarters due to their low occupancy. And the union also demands that before undertaking a new workforce adjustment, the company “commits to the internalization of services and reskilling in order to give employability to the workforce.” The company and unions will meet again next Thursday to advance the negotiation of open issues regarding a new collective agreement for the Spanish subsidiaries.
The new labor adjustment at Telefónica comes in the midst of a shareholder shakeup after the emergence of Saudi Arabia in its capital (with the aim of being the first shareholder with 9.9%) and when the Government moves to reassemble a new hard core of Spanish partners , with the public holding company Sepi as a white knight, to serve as a counterweight to the new Saudi shareholder.
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