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Vodafone Spain is currently facing strike action due to a redundancy plan implemented by its new owner, Zegona Communications
The Spanish trade union UGT has scheduled strikes for the 9th and 11th of July, with partial strikes being carried out on various days throughout the month.
Zegona Communications completed its €5 billion acquisition of Vodafone Spain earlier this month. Since then, the new owner has announced plans to cut around 1,200 jobs, just over a third of the Spanish operator’s total workforce.
According to local reports, Vodafone Spain cited “economic, productive and organizational reasons” for the job cuts, related to “the strong financial and commercial deterioration” of the business. As a result, the new owners view the cut as necessary to “guarantee the viability and competitiveness of the business in the future”.
This explanation was rejected by the Spanish union, however, which said “we understand that it is unjustifiable that Vodafone-Lowi-Zegona would cause economic losses that were known and could be confirmed in the due diligence prior to the purchase to destroy the future of 1,198 families.”
The UTG also attacked the Spanigh government for its “passivity in approving the sale without taking into account the possible negative impact on employment.”
“The viability of Vodafone Spain is called into question if it intends to maintain and improve the quality of the network through job destruction. What an oxymoron,” said the union in a statement.
The Spanish mobile market is notoriously competitive, with Vodafone struggling to hold its own against market leader Movistar and its newly merged rival MasOrange. Vodafone itself had hoped to be the focal point of market consolidation, but this plan was abandoned after the announcement of the Orange and MasMovil merger in 2022.
Since that time, Vodafone Spain has seen its results continue to dip, most recently reporting that total revenues were down 8% and the company has lost 400,000 customers in the last two years.
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