More than 15,000 job cuts have been announced this morning as the globe’s stock markets reel from the Worldcom scandal.
French telecommunications provider Alcatel is to slash 10,000 jobs and CAP Gemini Ernst & Young is to shed 5,500 jobs on top of cuts last year of 5,400.
Alcatel’s chief financial officer Jean-Pascal Beaufret said the company will reduce its work force by an additional 10,000 jobs to 70,000 by the end of 2003. That will equate to a downsizing of approximately 35 per cent in staff numbers. At the end of 2000, Alcatel had 110,000 staff on its books.
Beaufret said the new job cuts will come through a combination of layoffs, outsourcing and asset disposals.
Alcatel’s Brian Murphy could not elaborate on whether workers at the UK plant at Raleigh would be affected.
“At this point there has been no detailed information," he said. "We have nothing to announce at this time about how this will affect employees at the Raleigh business."
At Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, 2,500 jobs will go among its telecoms and financial service workers as well as 3,000 jobs in “non-client facing” positions.
Details as to where the cuts will fall have not yet been revealed.
