El Corte Inglés announces over 3,000 voluntary redundancies

Renowned Spanish department store group El Corte Inglés, negatively affected by the widespread increase in online shopping, heralded on Saturday a “company reorganisation” involving several thousand voluntary redundancies, according to trade union sources.

On Saturday, the group’s management met with union representatives, informing them that El Corte Inglés is “over-staffed by between 3,000 and 3,500 people, both at the group’s retail branches and the central offices,” according to Antonio Perez, general secretary of Fetico, one of the four unions represented at El Corte Inglés.

Perez mentioned the “increase in online sales” as one of the factors leading to over-staffing, and said that personnel cuts in Spain would take the form of voluntary redundancies. El Corte Inglés operates some one hundred department store branches in the country, as well as two in Portugal.

One of Spain’s leading private employers

In a joint press release, the unions said that, with this reorganisation, El Corte Inglés is seeking to improve “the company’s financial viability, its positioning within a changing market, and to keep pace with the retail sector's restructuring and its new scope, following the rise in online shopping.”

El Corte Inglés was founded in 1940 in Madrid and is a household name in Spain. It is one of the country's leading private employers, with a staff of 63,000 in its retail division alone, excluding its insurance and tourism subsidiaries.