Zegona faces a new obstacle in its path in the recently announced Vodafone ERE process. In this case, it is CCOO who denounces that Zegona, the British fund that has acquired Vodafone Spain, is not complying with the commitments it made at the time the Government gave the green light to the operation.
From CCOO they insist that Zegona committed to a series of commitments at the time it applied to receive the authorization with which to make the purchase of Vodafone Spain. At that time, the entity committed to both developing an increase in the deployment of 5G networks and increasing the investment that Vodafone Spain would make.
A statement denouncing the situation
CCOO began on Monday by issuing a statement in which this union directly attacks Zegona for not fulfilling those commitments we talked about. And it clearly explains that the reason why they are not fulfilling these commitments is the presentation of the ERE that affects a total of 1,198 workers. This employment regulation file collides directly, as argued by the Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions, with the investment and expansion plans in the country.
With the help of Félix Alonso Cantorné, from Sumar, the Government has been asked the question of the reason why Zegona has been authorized to purchase Vodafone Spain. His doubt lies in the fact that, from his point of view, it seems evident that the interest of the British fund is to carry out a mass dismissal of the operator’s staff. As he argues, with this action they would be laying off almost half of the workers that make up the Vodafone Spain team.
There are doubts about Zegona’s promises
CCOO does not believe that Zegona will fulfil its two commitments in this process of change that Vodafone Spain is undergoing. They do not believe that they will meet the levels of 5G network deployment that they had promised nor the reinforcement of investment that they had previously mentioned. The union also emphasizes that they do not believe that the company is viable under these conditions, since they have no confidence that they will be able to provide a quality service to customers. In general, they have serious doubts about the possible viability of Vodafone Spain in the near future.
Before concluding its statement, CCOO insists that Zegona is breaking the commitments it had accepted when it took on the Vodafone operation. They also claim that citizens will not benefit from this situation, nor will Spain in its race to remain at the forefront in Europe in terms of connectivity and Internet services.
They close their statements in a forceful way by assuring that the purchase of Vodafone Spain by Zegona will only serve to “fill the pockets of the speculators on duty” and leave almost half of the Spanish families that depend on Vodafone Spain without a livelihood. Therefore, it does not seem that they are willing to let Zegona continue with the ERE without putting the problem before the media.
It remains to be seen what Zegona’s response is and if there will be a forceful movement in this situation or if they will continue forward with their ERE plan as they were proposing since announcing it days ago. It is difficult to know what will happen, but it is obvious that CCOO is clear about its point of view on the commitments that Zegona accepted when he took charge of the acquisition of Vodafone Spain.
