Coca-Cola worldwide redundancies may affect Spanish employees

Although the largest cull is expected in the Atlanta head office, where up to 10% of staff could lose their jobs, employees in Spain may be affected.

Already, redundancies and forced relocations at Spain's four main Coca-Cola bottling plants - in Alicante, Fuenlabrada (Madrid) and Asturias - have led to protests and a court case brought by unions which led to the firm being obliged to give everyone their jobs back.

These job losses had been due to 'restructure' plans aimed at 'centralising operations', but the Spanish courts found this to be illegal since redundancies for non-disciplinary purposes are only permitted by law where the company is either facing financial struggles or the actual roles in question disappear with no possible feasible alternatives for those occupying them. 

This time, however, the distribution and bottling departments - which account for 85% of Coca-Cola's personnel - are not likely to be severely affected, and most of the company's workers in Spain are in these areas.

In total, Coca-Cola has around 136,000 employees worldwide.

But a small number of cutbacks may have to be made. 

Coca-Cola has also ordered its top managers and directors to reduce 'unnecessary' expenses, such as using taxis instead of chauffeur-driven limousines, and scrapping its 'spectacular' Christmas party held annually in Wall Street for the corporation's analysts.

The redundancies and expense reductions are part of a plan to slash overheads by three billion US dollars (around €2.5bn) between now and 2019, announced in October when Coca-Cola realised it would not meet its profit targets for the 2014 year end.

Profits were down by 7.5% on the previous year, to 6.3 billion dollars, and sales dropped by 35.1 billion, or 2%.

These announcements have come as a 'culture shock' to the corporation, according to The Wall Street Journal, since the soft drinks empire has traditionally been in favour of investment and growth rather than austerity in order to prosper.

And news of the company's intention of tightening its belt has not sat well with its shareholders, says Sanford analyst Bernstein Ali Dibadj, who believes the expense cuts should be even greater - closer to four billion dollars (€3.3bn).

Since October, Coca-Cola's shares have dipped by 2.2%.