Employees at Vodafone Spain are to go on strike next month in response to the proposed redundancies at the company.
As reported by local publication El Cronista, Spanish trade union, Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), has scheduled strikes for July 9 and July 11, with partial strikes being carried out on various days throughout the month.
Earlier this month, Vodafone Spain confirmed it will cut 1,200 jobs, following its recent takeover by UK investment firm Zegona.
The layoffs represent around a third of Vodafone's total workforce in the country.
Zegona, which was founded in 2015 by former Virgin Media executives Eamonn O'Hare and Robert Samuelson, finalized its €5 billion ($5.4bn) acquisition of Vodafone's Spanish unit at the end of last month.
At the time, UGT slammed the plans, criticizing senior management at the telco, which is Spain's third-largest mobile operator with around 13.5 million mobile customers in the country.
But its total revenues in Spain have dropped by eight percent, with the company also losing around 400,000 contract customers.
Vodafone stated that the cuts need to be made for "economic, productive, and organizational reasons" to ensure the company's future viability.
However, UGT hit back at this.
"We understand that it is unjustifiable that Vodafone-Lowi-Zegona would cause economic losses that were known and could be confirmed in the due diligence prior to the purchase to destroy the future of 1,198 families," the union said in a statement.
UGT also had strong words for the Spanish government, criticizing its approach to the telecoms sector.
"The Government should defend employment as an engine of wealth generation and this is not what seems to be happening in the telecommunications sector," it said.
"A sector, which we will not tire of saying, as a consequence of pernicious regulation continues to destroy employment. A job that, due to its characteristics, training, salary, and working conditions, provides real wealth in the territory with high tax contributions."
UGT said it rejected Vodafone's first compensation offer, reported to be for "24 days per year worked with a maximum of 14 monthly payments."
Workers at the telco will take full industrial action between July 9 and July 11, while several other "partial" strikes will take place between July 2 and July 4, plus more later in the month.
Employees will be taking to the picket line, in a similar way to BT workers in 2022 over a pay dispute. Represented by the Communications Workers Union (CWU), the union eventually won its battle against the telco giant following several months of industrial action from July through to October of that year.
