For the third time in six years, Vodafone announces a new ERE in Spain that, this time, will affect some 1,200 workers, that is, 25% of its workforce. The company has summoned them to start the consultation period at the end of January, which will take place for a month. The company argues that among the reasons for this wave of collective layoffs are customer preferences for low cost offers. And, according to the operator, almost half of the gross registrations are related to low and medium cost offers, which has led to the initiation of a cost restructuring with the aim of competing more face to face with its main rivals in the sector.
In 2013 Vodafone Spain started an ERE that resulted in the dismissal of 900 company workers. Two years later, 2015 was once again a fateful year for the company's employees. In fact, 1,000 had to leave their job at the operator. Four years later, another ERE overshadows Vodafone again. On this occasion, due to the low cost price war that it maintains with other companies. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the efforts that Vodafone had to make with Lowi to join the offer launched by Telefónica with O2 with unlimited calls + 20 GB, or the convergent of unlimited calls + 20 GB of data + 100 MB of symmetric fiber.
To all this must be added his bad decision not to acquire the Partidazo or the Champions League due to lack of profitability for the benefit of Movistar and Orange, his two main competitors. Everything indicates, according to the latest results, that Vodafone only has good figures in fiber, but continues to lose customers in mobile telephony, broadband and television. The new CEO worldwide, Nick Read, already commented in early January on a plan to reduce annual operating costs by 1.2 billion euros by 2021.What he did not elaborate on is in which areas the cuts would occur. Likewise, the Vodafone group has reduced the value of its subsidiary in Spain by 2,900 million euros due to the reassessment of the future business foreseen by the complicated economic and commercial conditions that exist today.
At the end of this month, the search for an agreement with the workers' representatives will begin. From Vodafone they are upset by having to carry out this measure, and they intend to achieve a good agreement that benefits both the company and the employees.
