The 55,000 BT redundancies announced a few days ago bring to 100,000 European workers who will lose their jobs due to the adjustments announced by large multinationals in recent months. Although in each particular case the job cuts have different causes, there are a couple of common ones in almost all of them: the galloping inflation in the EU and the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
The cuts focus on companies in sectors such as telecommunications (BT or Vodafone with 11,000 jobs), health (Philips with 6,000 or Grifols with 2,300), IT (SAP, 3,000), automotive (Volvo with 2,900 or Stellantis with 2,000) and chemistry (Basf, 2,600).
Raymond Torres, director of the situation at Funcas, reflects that “technology will influence productivity and it will be noticeable in employment”. In the case of BT, the same company acknowledged that the cut of 42% of the workforce will occur after the deployment of optical fiber and the adaptation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the different processes. According to BT, digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence alone can “save†20,000 jobs.
“The use of artificial intelligence is already reducing the number of jobs in some sectors. This shows the need to regulate the introduction and impact of AI at work, which has been a long-standing demand of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)â€, warned ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch.
Jaime Sol, partner responsible for EY’s human resources consultancy in Spain, also cites the emergence of artificial intelligence as one of the elements that has accelerated the adjustments. But he also warns that high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the crisis in supply chains are forcing companies to carry out “adjustment measures to improve productivity and profitability”. It is an opinion shared by Orestes Wensell, director of labor solutions at Manpower, who states that many companies “take drastic measures to reduce costs, especially through the reduction of the structure, to remain competitive”.
Wensell insists that although there are different reasons for each company, there are “several common factors, such as the economic slowdown, high levels of inflation, automation and other technological changes, the competitiveness of global markets and the geopolitical crisis we are experiencing with the war”.
Raymond Torres, although he warns of the effects of weaker growth in the coming months, also highlights the better relative behavior in the face of the threats arising from the war in Ukraine. “The impact has been less because we have reorganized the way of life”, he adds.
Regarding the 100,000 redundancies in Europe, the general secretary of the ETUC, Lynch, states that “these figures show that workers are paying the price of political inaction in the face of the biggest challenges facing Europe today”. In relation to the possible causes, the British trade unionist points out that “they are the result of the energy crisis, but they could have been avoided if the EU had listened to the unions and extended the labor protection scheme used so successfully during the pandemic to help the sectors most affected by price increases”. Lynch also blames mergers for the increase in layoffs. The new general secretary of the ETUC believes that the EU should react: “The increasing number of job cuts should be a wake-up call for national and EU leaders”.
