The Nestlé La Penilla workforce, in Santa María de Cayón, shows itself "very worried" after the announcement this Tuesday of an Employment Regulation File (ERE) that could affect up to 301 people in the 13 workplaces that the company has in Spain. For the moment, it is unknown how many of those positions will correspond to the Cantabrian factory.
The workers consider that the dismissals in this plant, which has an average of about 800 employees, and in the rest of the centers involved should be "the minimum possible" given that Nestlé "makes profits", as stated to Europa Press by the president of the works council, Juan Miguel González (UGT).
The management summoned the committees of all its centers in Spain this Tuesday to inform them of the collective dismissal, which is part of an "operational transformation" plan. From now on, a 15-day period opens to form a 13-member union negotiating committee, in which it is intended that at least one representative from La Penilla participate, as it is one of Nestlé's most relevant factories in the country along with the one in Girona.
The negotiating table must be constituted before May 6 and will have one month to try to close the best possible agreement on the ERE. In this process, the unions will try to lower the figure of 301 dismissals, although their objective is that "none" occur, as indicated by González, who is also part of the multinational's European committee.
For UGT-FICA, this ERE, which is added to the global restructuring with the suppression of 16,000 jobs worldwide, is "unjustified, disproportionate, and socially unacceptable" in a company that "maintains a world leadership position in the food sector and continues to generate multi-million dollar profits".
The union recalled in a statement that Nestlé reached in 2025 a turnover in Spain of 89,000 million Swiss francs (more than 97,000 million euros) and a net profit of 9,000 million Swiss francs (a little more than 9,800 million euros).
"We are not facing a company in crisis," insists the UGT union section at Nestlé, which remarks that "the company itself foresees accelerating its organic growth to 3.4% and with an improvement in sales volume." "It is unacceptable that a company with this economic capacity intends to adjust its strategy at the expense of thousands of jobs," denounces the union.
Therefore, UGT demands "the immediate withdrawal of the dismissal plan, a firm commitment not to apply traumatic measures, and an alternative plan based on internal reorganization," rejecting that the company justifies the ERE on criteria of "efficiency and organizational transformation."