The MADRID Reuters-Treasury will offer voluntary redundancy to staff born in 1967 or earlier and with at least 15 years of employment at the company, the UGT union said on Tuesday. 3,261 employees would meet those conditions.
Europe's third largest telecoms group and direct employer of 16,000 people in Spain will limit take-up of the offer to 60% of eligible staff, UGT said, adding that consulting group KPMG has helped formulate the plan.
Some departments are set to be spared, such as those focused on cybersecurity, marketing and artificial intelligence, said Diego Gallart, UGT representative.
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 the uptake will be in line with previous averages of 70% because the more senior staff are being presented with worse conditions than in past packages and may not find the current one appealing. Telefonica wouldn't say anything about what it said were ongoing negotiations with trade unions.
A source who knew 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.
Telefonica has had to deal with intense competition in an increasingly low-cost Spanish market, as well as a lot of pressure from investors.
The operator of mobile and broadband had a third-quarter net profit this month thanks to the performance of its foreign businesses.
In Spain's core profit fell 8.9% year on year and operations chief Angel Vila told analysts that soaring power costs would continue to weigh on profitibility in the coming quarters.