BT job losses to top 13,000

Agence France-Presse, London

British telecoms giant BT revealed Tuesday that thousands more jobs will disappear next year, bringing the total cut to 13,000 in three years, as it streamlines its business to cope with the squeeze gripping the industry.

The job losses, part of a three-year cost-cutting program aimed at saving 850 million pounds (US$1.26 billion), are part of BT's effort to transform itself from bloated international behemoth to lean provider of fixed-line telephony services.

Staff numbers will be whittled down through "natural wastage", which BT hopes will "improve efficiency and slim down the BT retail operation," a spokesman told AFP.

BT has announced the job cuts in dribs and drabs in recent months, but Tuesday marked the first time it had come up with an overall figure.

"It is 13,000 jobs between the beginning of 2000 and 2003," the spokesman said. "It's natural wastage. About 5,500-6,000 people leave BT every year. And over the next three years as these people leave they won't be replaced."

The figure amounts to about 20 percent of staff in the BT Retail division, which will employ 45,000 staff by early 2003, the spokesman said. Many of the job cuts are also targeting agency staff contracted to BT.

The cutbacks come as part of an overhaul that marks the biggest shake-up in BT since the former state-run monopoly was privatized in 1984.

A combination of the huge cost of next-generation mobile telephony licenses and assets and the general downturn gripping the sector has brought many telecoms giants to their knees.

BT at one point was waterlogged with debt approaching 30 billion pounds, with the payback from third-generation mobile telephony still years away.

It decided to cut its losses with a series of radical changes.