Spain’s BBVA to cut 2,935 jobs in Spain, union says By Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) – BBVA (MC:BBVA) has reached an agreement with unions to lay off 2,935 employees in Spain, around 12% of its banking workforce in its home market, the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union said on Tuesday.

In April, BBVA said it was initially planning to cut 3,798 jobs and close 530 branches, almost a quarter of its offices, to adapt to a customer shift towards online banking.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for CCOO said that the lender had also agreed to reduce the number of branches affected to 480.

BBVA declined to comment.

CCOO said in its statement on Tuesday that some of its demands, such as implementing any cuts through voluntary redundancies, were met.

Under the agreement, around 210 employees will also be able to request an incentivised leave.

Last week, BBVA signalled it was open to reducing the number of job cuts to below 3,000, according to CCOO, following a one-day strike by thousands of its employees, in what was the first such work stoppage involving a national bank in 30 years.

As of end-2020, the bank had around 2,480 branches in Spain and 23,300 staff in its pure banking business.

Spanish banks’ staff have recently been holding protests against plans by five lenders to cut around 18,000 jobs.

On Monday, Caixabank, which has bought Bankia to create Spain’s biggest domestic lender, and unions decided to prolong their negotiations regarding around 7,600 job cuts.