“A company that has a profit cannot apply for collective dismissal”

“It’s not clear.” This Thursday, the Second Vice-President of the Government and Minister of Labor spoke candidly about the employment regulation documents and the collective layoffs announced by Ford Almussafes and the Zegona Foundation for Vodafone. In an interview with TVE, Yolanda Diaz stated that her “position” is that “a company with exceptional profits cannot file for collective dismissal.”

The head of the work recalled that “it is not the responsibility of the ministry” to contact the ERE of the Almussafes plant, since “it is located in the Valencian Community.” “This is the absolute responsibility of the Generalitat, that is, the PP, which has exclusive powers in industrial matters,” he insisted, before calling on the people of Valencia to “act” and commit to “contributing to the creation of a legislative framework.” When asked directly whether she would work to legally abolish ERE benefits, Diaz insisted on the same idea: “A company that has benefits cannot file a collective dismissal, it is not clear.”

Ford’s Almussafes plant has reduced its workforce by 46% from 2022, despite receiving €19.5 million in aid from the Generalitat of Valenciana. As a result of the new restructuring, the company intends to keep 1,622 more workers on the street. “We are one of the few countries in Europe that does not regulate relocations or similar aspects, and a company with huge profits can afford to consider the possibility of collective dismissal,” Diaz stressed. At the end of 2023, the company reported a global net profit of more than 4 billion euros.

The Sumar parliamentary group already submitted a bill to the Congress of Deputies in mid-May to guarantee the rights of workers in relocation processes. The platform believes that “the direct effects in our country are a reduction in investment and the closure of production centers,” although they have more favorable terms for companies in terms of workers’ compensation.

This registration coincides with ERE’s announcement by Saint Gobain that it will move production to the Sekurit plant in Avilés, outside the European Union. “We are dealing with a very large multinational corporation that has very important profits and that has simply decided to move part of its production to Morocco and also to Romania. “We don’t share this at all,” the minister said then.

In this legislature, the Ministry has already demonstrated its intention to work towards dismissal in Spain. In some cases, at the insistence of Europe, which opposed restrictions on severance pay. In other cases, this opens up the possibility of amending the Workers’ Statute in this direction. In April, Diaz herself opened the door to eliminating objective layoffs when a company reduces profits. “You can simply be fired if the company does not reach its planned profit level. Not if he has losses, but simply if he does not reach the levels of benefits that he planned,” the vice president explained in her speech in the Senate, where she stated that “we will have to do something change” in this regard.

In the case of Vodafone Spain, a subsidiary acquired by UK investment fund Zegona, the collective redundancy would “potentially” affect a maximum of 1,198 employees, around a third of the workforce. The company cited exactly the reason Diaz said two months ago that “some things” would have to change: Its revenue was down 8%.