Coca-Cola worldwide redundancies may affect Spanish employees
Monday, January 12, 2015 @ 10:41 AM
COCA-COLA has announced plans to make up to 1,800 workers redundant worldwide in light of falling consumption of the planet's most famous fizzy drink.
Although the largest cull is expected in the Atlanta head office, where up to 10% of staff could lose their jobs, employees in Spain may be affected.
Already, redundancies and forced relocations at Spain's four main Coca-Cola bottling plants - in Alicante, Fuenlabrada (Madrid) and Asturias - have led to protests and a court case brought by unions which led to the firm being obliged to give everyone their jobs back.
These job losses had been due to 'restructure' plans aimed at 'centralising operations', but the Spanish courts found this to be illegal since redundancies for non-disciplinary purposes are only permitted by law where the company is either facing financial struggles or the actual roles in question disappear with no possible feasible alternatives for those occupying them.
This time, however, the distribution and bottling departments - which account for 85% of Coca-Cola's personnel - are not likely to be severely affected, and most of the company's workers in Spain are in these areas.
In total, Coca-Cola has around 136,000 employees worldwide
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