Banco Santander has communicated this Thursday to the trade unions its intention to initiate a workforce adjustment process for organizational reasons, according to what Europa Press has learned through sources close to the dialogue between both parties.
The employment regulation file (ERE) will focus on the technological subsidiaries of the group, Santander Digital Services and Gravity. The entity justifies this measure by the need to reorganize these two companies once most of the work related to the deployment of new platforms and technological products has already been completed.
In the specific case of Gravity, responsible for the development and maintenance of the platform that supports Santander's banking 'core', only its deployment in Brazil remains to be carried out, given that in the other countries where the bank operates it is already in operation.
For the moment, the bank has limited itself to informing the unions of its decision to initiate this ERE, with the commitment that the process will be carried out in the least traumatic way possible and through negotiation. As the negotiating table has not yet been established nor have formal meetings taken place with the representatives of the workforce, the scope of the job cuts and the specific conditions that will be offered to the affected employees are currently unknown.
Banco Santander's commitment to activate this ERE comes just a few months after the entity closed a retirement plan with the unions aimed at older workers.
Unlike the ERE now announced, the retirement plan acts as a framework to organize the incentivized exits that have already been occurring in the bank. In addition, it does not set a target number of departures, since the retirements are structured as a voluntary mechanism for both parties: the company can reject certain applications and employees are not obliged to join the program.
According to the latest published accounts, Santander Global Technology & Operations, the legal parent of Santander Digital Services, had an average workforce of over 10,000 workers in the past fiscal year. The company tripled its result, placing its profits above 16.4 million euros.