Banca Cívica will be the first financial institution to experience the new flexibility within the Spanish labor market, but laying off 1,500 workers still seem inevitable. The bank has offered employees alternative work schedules, salary reductions and voluntary dismissal plans under Spain's ERE program.
BMN has taken the same approach and is proposing, in addition to reducing its payroll by five percent, rotating three-week furloughs over the course of two years.
It is significant that all of this comes just three weeks after reforms were signed, because we can observe that the reforms are not just empty rhetoric.
Companies and workers are benefiting from practical decisions instead of getting involved in agreements that just serve to increase unemployment.
