He also advocates reducing the impact and does not agree that the collective dismissal is due solely to external factors.
MADRID, 11 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The unions and Telefónica held new meetings this Monday on the employment regulation files (ERE) that the company will apply in its three main subsidiaries in Spain (Telefónica de España, Móviles and Soluciones) and labor organizations have opposed the possibility. to introduce “forced departures”, while UGT has suggested that the process should also affect the company’s management area.
“UGT cannot accept talking about surpluses and readjustments that affect only workers without knowing what actions will be taken with the management area that has had the responsibility of foreseeing and avoiding the current situation. We consider that, if an extinction occurs of jobs, that same percentage of affectation and age scale must also be extended to the management area, which, by the way, is the oldest,” the organization said in a statement.
The unions have also lamented the “paradigm change” that involves including the possibility of carrying out forced departures in relation to previous processes, in which the voluntariness of workers to adhere to the workforce reduction plan was included.
On the other hand, although UGT does not question the impact that the macroeconomic environment has had on Telefónica’s activity, the union does not agree that all the factors used by the company to carry out this collective dismissal are external in nature.
“We do not share the view that all factors are external, inevitable or not attributable to decisions taken over recent years within Telefónica,” the union has stressed.
“UGT does not consider it acceptable that the result of robotization, automation and the use of AI (artificial intelligence) tools results in job destruction and, therefore, does not share the proposed scope set at 5,124 jobs, nor the division made between areas and activities of the company affected or not, at the discretion of the company, by the collective dismissal”, he added.
In this sense, the three unions (UGT, CCOO and Sumados-Fetico) present in the negotiations have reiterated that, in their opinion, it is possible to retrain workers in the company, while at the same time they are committed to promoting “voluntary functional mobility ” and the internalization of activities to guarantee the “employability of the workforce”.
In addition, they have rejected that there are “areas and activities” of the company that will not be affected by the collective dismissal, something that would prevent workers in those departments from joining the exit plan voluntarily.
“We consider that not only does the impact have to be significantly reduced, but also that the agreement we reach must be universal, extendable to the entire company and must make it possible for those people who the company did not allow to voluntarily benefit from the last PSI (plan of individual departures) for belonging to an area considered critical, now have the possibility of, if they wish, to terminate their employment relationship with Telefónica in this way,” added UGT.
Specifically, the company has informed the unions that the “functional surplus” is 81 workers at Telefónica Soluciones, 958 at Telefónica Móviles and 4,085 at Telefónica de España, which adds up to a total of 5,124 employees.
Likewise, the collective dismissal will affect employees born in 1968 and previous years who have a minimum seniority in the company of 15 years.
The negotiation tables of the three regulatory files took place between 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. this Monday, although those of Telefónica de España and Telefónica Móviles had a break and continued in the afternoon due to “inconsistencies in the documentation “presented by the company, as union sources have indicated to Europa Press.
Regarding these “inconsistencies”, Sumados-Fetico has explained that in the documentation sent by the company it happens that in some centers the number of surplus personnel is greater than the volume of staff that meets the requirements for the ERE, That is, people born in 1968 or earlier and with 15 or more years of experience in the company.
This is also stated by CCOO and UGT in a joint statement: “We have conveyed to the company questions about inconsistencies in the report. It speaks of 1968 and earlier as affected years, but the number of surplus people is greater than the figure for those years.”
Along these lines, the unions have once again emphasized that the negotiation of the ERE goes hand in hand with that of the new collective agreement of related companies (CEV), given that the current one is an extension of the previous one and expires on December 31.
The next meetings on the ERE at Telefónica will take place on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, while those on the collective agreement will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
