{"id":29966,"date":"2013-01-16T12:02:22","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T10:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=29966"},"modified":"2013-01-16T12:17:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T10:17:48","slug":"vodafone-spain-to-cut-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/29966\/vodafone-spain-to-cut-workforce\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodafone Spain to cut workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodafone<\/a> may slash its workforce in Spain by up to a quarter as it fights an escalating price war in a shrinking market while the country goes through its worst economic crisis in decades.<\/p>\n

The British company wrote down the value of its businesses in Spain and Italy by 5.9 billion pounds ($9.5 billion) in November. The firm said service revenue in Spain declined 11 percent year-on-year in the six months to end-Sept, due to macroeconomic weakness and high unemployment.<\/p>\n

Vodafone did not give details of how many workers could be dismissed. It will begin negotiations with labour unions on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

A union source said Vodafone could cut around a quarter of Vodafone’s 4,300-strong workforce, although the company has not given any official figures to unions.<\/p>\n

“We managed to avoid lay-offs last year by agreeing to work suspensions and salary cuts, but now everything is pointing to them wanting to fire close to 1,000 workers,” the union source said.<\/p>\n

A price war has heated up between mobile operators in Spain in recent months, as cash-strapped customers ditch their mobile phones in record numbers and some switch to cheaper virtual operators.<\/p>\n

Biggest players Telefonica<\/a> and Vodafone have fared worst from the trend. Vodafone lost 278,000 mobile customers in October.<\/p>\n

Former monopoly Telefonica said in 2011 it would cut 6,500 jobs from its domestic workforce over three years.<\/p>\n

Many companies in Spain are laying off workers to save costs as consumer confidence plummets, drying up profits in the country, where one in four of the workforce is jobless.<\/p>\n

Airline Iberia is currently locked in negotiations with unions over plans to cut 4,500 jobs.<\/p>\n

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Vodacom shares up 2.3% on H1 results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

We have appetite to grow: Vodacom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom LTE tested, and it\u2019s fast<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodafone may slash its workforce in Spain by up to a quarter as it fights an escalating price war in a shrinking market while the country goes through its worst economic crisis in decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,2949,737,2575],"class_list":["post-29966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-active","tag-job-cuts","tag-vodafone","tag-vodafone-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29966"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29968,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29966\/revisions\/29968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}