Vodafone’s new leadership will push through a large-scale layoff plan that affects more than a quarter of the telecom group’s workforce. Unions representing staff at the company have opened a staff consultation on the final offer, and the majority of employees have endorsed the proposal. With 1,821 votes in favor and 468 against, the workforce has authorized the unions to confirm the employment cutbacks on the company’s terms. The unions are expected to sign the agreement with the company tomorrow.
Vodafone presented unions with a final ultimatum, delivering a definitive plan aimed at a substantial reduction in staff. Zegona, the British investment vehicle that acquired Vodafone Spain a short time earlier for about 5 billion euros, put forward a last proposal designed to limit the impact of the redundancy process. It offered fewer dismissals and improved severance terms. The company warned that, should unions and staff reject this offer, it would revert to the minimum protections mandated by law, according to union sources.
Zegona’s final plan suggested reducing the number of required terminations to 898, roughly 25 percent fewer than the 1,198 originally proposed at the outset. Even so, the layoff figure still represented about 27 percent of the current workforce at the telco, now integrated into a 3,268-strong employee base. The proposal also included boosting severance to between 33 and 45 days for each year of service, with a cap at 24 monthly payments, aligning it with standard protections seen in cases of unfair dismissal, as opposed to the initial offer of 24 days per year with a 12-month cap.
The telecom group committed to pausing any new collective dismissals through December 31, 2025. It added a 3,500-euro signing bonus for workers earning less than 40,000 euros annually, which would not count toward the 24-month cap. A special early retirement option was introduced for employees aged 57 and over, with ten years of service; those workers would receive 80 percent of their net regulatory salary for a number of years dependent on their actual age. The plan also provided temporary job security protections for staff who were 55 on or before December 31, 2024, extending through December 31, 2025, among other measures.
Unions had previously presented their own proposal, which featured more generous terms than Vodafone’s latest offer. The union plan included 67 days of severance per year of service with no cap on monthly payments, voluntary departures with no company veto, and a commitment to no further dismissals through 2027, among other provisions.
Vodafone Spain is positioned to carry out what will be the fifth collective layoff operation in the Spanish arm of the company since 2013. Across the entire period, cumulative dismissals have affected roughly 3,200 employees. A 2013 action impacted about 620 workers, followed by 1,059 in 2015, then 1,102 in 2019, and a reduction of 442 in 2021, according to company disclosures and union records. These figures reflect the ongoing restructuring of a telco that has faced multiple rounds of workforce reductions as it reshapes its regional footprint and service mix. (Cited from company statements and union reports.)