Today, CaixaBank and the employees’ legal representatives held the second meeting of the informal consultation period of the labor restructuring process.
Management has informed that, after a detailed analysis of the needs of the commercial network and corporate services, it has reached the conclusion that a Workforce Adjustment Plan (ERE) is needed for 8,291 contracts. This process is based on production and organisational grounds, given the overlaps and synergies derived from the merger and the current market circumstances.
Management has explained that the criteria to be applied to determine the scope of the process will be:
- Voluntary, as a preferred criterion, although always having the surplus quota identified in each territory or functional department as a maximum limit, and establishing measures that avoid generational imbalance. For this reason, there is a proposal for the percentage of workers over the age of 50 who volunteer to not exceed 50% of all departures from the institution.
- Meritocracy, as the next criterion to be applied, after the application of the voluntary measure that guarantees a generational balance.
During the meeting, a proposal regarding severance payments was also made, and the institution's commitment was demonstrated with an outplacement and support plan for all affected people, to facilitate their incorporation into and adaptation to a new job position, which will be absolutely differential and more details of which will be provided in future meetings.
Meanwhile, management presented a proposal to modify labour conditions to make progress towards a sustainable and unified framework of conditions, regardless of the company of origin of each employee. This is the unification of measures that are fundamentally related to complementary aspects of payment and social welfare, as well as questions related to the flexibility required to make progress in the business model and maintain the sustainability of the rural network.
Until this framework comes into force, employees will retain their current conditions. Once the new framework is in use, it is expected that, as a general rule, employees will keep their current remuneration, except for any new conditions agreed upon that entail an improvement, in which case this will be applied over the time period agreed upon. These new conditions will also be applied to new employees who join the institution in the future.
