Telefónica is taking another step in its cost adjustment strategy and is preparing a new plan for incentivized voluntary departures that it will offer to a maximum of 5,000 employees and that will be applied in stages until 2026, as the newspaper Expansión announced this Monday and has was able to contrast La Vanguardia with sources familiar with the project.
This idea would be part of the new Strategic Plan that the company will present to the market on November 8 when President José María Álvarez Pallete, during Investor Day.
The unions have not yet formally learned about the proposal, the details of which they will receive in the coming days, but they hope that it will be in line with the incentive exit plans (PSI) that the company has been implementing in recent years and that it will be aimed at workers born in 1968. and 1969 with room for other ages.
The last one was in 2021 and with it 2,982 employees left, 66% of the 4,500 who had the right to benefit. In this case, Telefónica agreed to pay between 65% and 68% of the salary, depending on the age of the worker, and assumed the payment of both the Social Security contribution and the medical insurance, the contribution to the group pensions and collective risk insurance up to age 65.
Conditions similar to the three PSIs that the company has implemented since 2015 and which have resulted in the departure of around 12,000 employees.
On this occasion, the departures will coincide with the closure of the copper network that is scheduled for next year and which required the retraining of many of the workers in this type of infrastructure, one of the most manual in the entire company. in order to adjust to the new employment structures currently demanded by the company.
If an agreement is reached with the unions, Telefónica would provision the cost of the departures in the 2023 accounts, assuming the financial impact in this fiscal year outside the new 2024-2026 Strategic Plan. If the data handled now is in line with the final result, the cost would be similar to that of the previous PSI, about 1,000 million.
