Telefonica is set to reduce its Spanish workforce by around 3,000 jobs through a new voluntary redundancy scheme, according to sources from the UGT union cited by Reuters. The operator, which directly employs 16,000 people in Spain, is offering voluntary redundancy to staff born in 1967 or earlier and with at least 15 years of employment at the company, said the union, adding that 3,261 employees currently meet the conditions.
The scheme will be limited to 60 percent of eligible staff and will not include some departments, such as those focused on cybersecurity, marketing and artificial intelligence, according to UGT representative Diego Gallart. He added that most of the redundancies will be offered in departments covering network deployment, maintenance and more basic customer service.
Telefonica confirmed that negotiations were currently underway with trade unions but declined to comment further. The operator’s Spanish unit (Telefonica Espana) consolidated its recent return to growth in the third quarter of 2021, posting revenues of EUR 3.11 billion, up 0.4 percent year on year, thanks in part to the return of the football season. However, its core profit declined 8.9 percent year on year as a result of higher energy costs, above all, coupled with higher content costs and the erosion of value due to the pandemic.
The planned redundancies follow agreements with unions reached by Vodafone Spain and Orange Spain earlier this year to cut 442 and 400 workers respectively, attributed to the intensity of competition and the drift towards low-value rates.
