The UGT union said on Tuesday that 3,261 employees would meet the conditions for voluntary redundancy to be offered to employees born in 1967 or earlier and with at least 15 years of employment at the company.
Europe's third-largest telecoms group and direct employer of 16,000 people in Spain would limit take-up of the offer to 60 per cent of eligible staff, according to UGT. Consulting group KPMG has helped formulate the plan.
The departments that are to be spared, such as those that are focusing on cybersecurity, marketing and artificial intelligence, are set to be spared, UGT representative Diego Gallart told Reuters.
Most of the redundancies will be offered in the network deployment, maintenance and more basic customer service departments, according to Gallart.
It's hard to say whether uptake will be in line with previous averages of 70 per cent because more senior staff are being presented with worse conditions than in past packages and may not find the current one appealing. Telefonica did not say anything about the ongoing negotiations with trade unions.
A source who knew of the matter said 2,000 -- 4,000 jobs would be cut, making Telefonica the third major telecoms group to seek redundancies in Spain this year, after similar moves by Vodafone and Orange.
An increasingly low-cost Spanish market, as well as a growing pressure on investors, has resulted in a lot of competition for Telefonica.
The mobile and broadband operator posted a third-quarter net profit this month thanks to the performance of its foreign businesses.
In Spain's core profit fell 8.9 per cent year on year, operations chief Angel Vila told analysts that soaring power costs would continue to weigh on profitibility in the coming quarters.