Call center company CPM plans at least 600 layoffs in Barcelona

BarcelonaThe multinational customer service company CPM has planned to lay off between 600 and 700 workers at its call center from Barcelona, ​​​​close to 60% of the staff, according to what was announced this Friday The Newspaper and the ARA has been able to confirm. It is the centre located on Felipe II street in the Catalan capital, where until now around 1,100 people worked. The company has informed the staff of this decision, attributing it to productive and organisational reasons.

Sources from the Generalitat's Labour Department explain, however, that the employment regulation file to carry out this staff reduction has not yet been formally registered. These dismissals coincide with CPM losing three clients recently, among which the most important is the British vacuum cleaner company Dyson. It has also stopped working with the fashion firm Lee Wrangler and the connected watch company Withings Scanwatch. The first meeting to begin negotiating the ERE with the workers will be on Wednesday 12 March, union sources specify.

This is not the first time that CPM workers have suffered mass layoffs after a client leaves the company: it already happened in 2020 when the end of the contract with the Airbnb tourist rental platform ended with 1,000 workers from the company. call center from Barcelona on the street.

The unions say they will mobilize to demand more explanations from management about this new round of cuts and demand that they be informed about the future viability of CPM. "It makes us sick that a company that earns millions every four months makes its workers pay for its poor management," say the workers' representatives. Those same voices suspect that the company is taking advantage of the opportunity to relocate its jobs and open new positions in countries such as Greece, where wage costs are lower.

The company is part of the American group Omnicom, a listed company that had a turnover of 7,484 million dollars during the first half of 2024, its latest available results.