Spain's MasOrange Plans to Cut Up to 795 Jobs

By Adria Calatayud

Spanish telecommunications operator MasOrange plans to cut up to 795 jobs, or about 9% of its total staff, five months after the business was created through the merger of Orange's unit in the country with rival MasMovil.

MasOrange said Tuesday that it proposed a voluntary redundancy program that will affect less than 10% of its total staff of 8,700.

The company found after the first months of operation that there are organizational duplications as a result of the integration of the staffs of the two businesses and decided to carry out an adjustment plan, it said in a message to employees.

Orange and MasMovil completed in late March a deal that led to a combination of the French telecommunications group's Spanish business with its privately held rival. The resulting company, Spain's No. 1 telecom operator by number of customer, was officially launched on April 3 as MasOrange, with a pledge to invest about 4 billion euros ($4.43 billion) in Spain over the following three years.

Spanish unions CCOO and UGT said in separate statements that they reject the job-cut plan.

The job-cut proposal came after the company promised in recent months that such programs wouldn't be executed, CCOO said.

The company convened unions for Sept. 17 to start talks that will last one month at most, UGT said.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 03, 2024 07:40 ET (11:40 GMT)

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