Vodafone freezes salaries

Vodafone freezes salaries

Mobile phone giant Vodafone has frozen salaries for its 10,000 UK staff as it looks to slash costs, it has been reported. The move comes barely a month after Vodafone announced it was cutting around 500 jobs in the UK as part of plans to save £1 billion worldwide by March 2011.

According to the Independent on Sunday other measures to affect the firm's UK subsidiary include scrapping bonuses and ordering sales representatives to keep their cars for longer.
In a confidential memo Guy Laurence, chief executive of the UK business, reportedly told staff the move to stop pay rises was a "tough decision to make, but a responsible one". "If we had agreed to a salary rise it would have forced us to increase the number of redundancies in the recent announcement," he said. A Vodafone insider told the Independent on Sunday that morale at the firm was at "rock bottom" after the announcement. "Staff who worked like hell this year to make sure the company can post huge profits have been stabbed in the back," the source said. It is understood that management will also forego any salary increases.

Newbury-based Vodafone has seen conditions worsen in the UK and other key markets as the recession has deepened, hitting sales of handsets. As well as its headquarters in Newbury, Vodafone has call centres and offices in Newark, Banbury, Theale, Trowbridge, London, Warrington, Stoke-on-Trent and Hayes