Vodafone to shed jobs
Mobile phone company Vodafone has said that it is cutting 375 jobs across its business from this month. Vodafone said the roles affected would be primarily in back office positions in a number of locations including its headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire.
The cuts are part of a £1 billion cost-cutting programme undertaken by the group in the last year, although Vodafone also said today that it would take on 170 new staff in customer-facing roles.
An additional 50 graduates will start work this September after more than 3,000 applied to its university leaver programme.
Matthew Brearley, human resources director at Vodafone UK, said: "We're committed to increasing the number of customer-facing employees which will help us simplify our business and continue to deliver outstanding communications services across the UK's best network."
Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said: "It's regrettable that Vodafone is making these job losses and is certainly bad news for the company's staff.
"We're not sure that the current information coming from the company regarding redundancies is entirely accurate. There are rumours that jobs will be lost from Vodafone sites in Stoke and Warrington and these are both customer-facing operations, while Vodafone has implied that customer-facing roles will be expanded.
"We'd like to see greater clarity from the company on how this decision will affect staff, a willingness to explore redeployment opportunities and greater assurances about a voluntary approach to redundancies".
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