Vodafone Spain to axe up to 1,200 jobs, over 20% of workforce

Vodafone Spain has announced that it’s preparing a collective dismissal of 1,200 workers over the coming months, equivalent to around 22 percent of its workforce. In a statement, the company said it will begin negotiations with labour representatives at the end of January and that it expects talks to last around a month. Vodafone said its decision was taken for “economic, productive and organisational reasons” and that customer expectations required it to implement a more simplified organisational model that reinforces the coordination and synergies between its teams. 

The operator added that ever-increasing customer demand for “low and medium cost offers” have forced it to take cost restructuring measures with a view to competing successfully in all segments.

Vodafone’s move comes after it announced in November that challenging trading and economic conditions prompted a reassessment of its expected future business performance in Spain, leading to an impairment charge of EUR 2.9 billion for the 6 months ending 30 September. The operator’s organic service revenues fell 4.7 percent year on year to EUR 2.21 billion in its fiscal second quarter to the end of September, while its adjusted EBITDA declined by 27.2 percent to EUR 542 million.

The company’s latest collective dismissal is its third in around 6 years, following the axing of over 1,000 jobs as a result of its acquisition of Spanish cable provider Ono in July 2014 and another redundancy process affecting some 900 workers in 2013.