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By Clara-Laeila Laudette
MADRID, Sept 15 (Reuters) - British telecommunications
company Vodafone said on Wednesday its Spanish unit
planned to cut up to 515 jobs, mainly in its commercial
operations, as it faces "challenging conditions on the
competitive Spanish market".
The company said it would meet with unions at the end of
September and open a one-month negotiation period to lay off up
to 12% of its Spanish workforce.
"For some years now, intense price competition and the drift
towards low-value fees in Spain has led to a sharp fall in
revenues and a significant margin deterioration," Vodafone Spain
said in a statement.
Labour unions denounced the move as an attempt to hide
executives' failure to redirect the company and called for
innovation and greater efficiency instead of job cuts.
"This is Vodafone's fourth round of layoffs [in eight years]
... and represents lawmakers and regulators' inability to
provide sustainability to a key sector crucial to the digital
economy of the future," the UGT union, which holds 50% of
workers' negotiating votes, said in a statement.
Vodafone is the latest mobile and broadband operator to seek
cuts to its workforce after France-based Orange
announced it was laying off 485 employees in May, citing Spain's
increasingly low-cost, hyper-competitive telecoms sector.
Vodafone described the collective layoff bid as an
essential step to improving operational returns.
"This comes as a result of the deterioration Vodafone has
suffered in the market, and the losses it recorded in recent
financial results," one source with knowledge of the matter told
Reuters. "But the aim is to create more jobs than those being
lost by end-2022 - particularly in digital areas."
Spain's telecommunications sector has lost around half its
jobs in the past 20 years, experts estimate.
UGT said talks would begin at the latest on Sept. 28.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo and Clara-Laeila Laudette
Editing by Nathan Allen and Mark Potter)
