1,560 jobs at risk as Getir grocery app to quit Spain: Union

MADRID

Home delivery grocery app Getir has said it will implement a widespread redundancy plan that unions say will involve cutting 1,560 jobs as it withdraws from the Spanish market.

The move came just 10 days after the Turkish grocery delivery firm said it was pulling out of the French market, citing complex legal regulations.

In a statement to AFP on Friday, Getir said it had met Thursday with the employees' legal representatives "to initiate the collective redundancy process in Spain".

"Getir will make the best effort to exhaust all the alternatives that may arise during negotiations," it said, though it would not confirm any further details until "negotiations have been completed".

According to the CCOO workers union, the redundancy plan affects all of Getir's 1,560 staff in Spain, ending all of its activities in Spain.

The company had said "it was waiting for funding which it had not received", triggering the decision "to cease all activity", a union statement said.

"We have asked our legal services to study the documentation provided by Getir in order to substantiate the reasons for such action," it said, denouncing the company's "disastrous management" that failed to establish "a market strategy in Spain".

The union said talks would resume on July 5.

Founded in Istanbul in 2015, Getir won substantial financial backing from investors such as the California-based investment funds Sequoia Capital and Silver Lake as well as the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.

A self-proclaimed pioneer in ultra-fast grocery delivery, Getir currently operates in nine countries on three continents and is present in several European cities, entering the Spanish market towards the end of 2021.

But on June 21, Getir said it was withdrawing from France, leaving some 1,800 employees in limbo, citing "the complex legal and regulatory environment imposed by the local authorities had made the company's chances of success very difficult".

Its French operations had been placed in receivership at the end of March.