Alcatel-Lucent is preparing to fire 1,000 new employees over this and next year in the French operation. The information, communicated to the company’s unions at the end of the week, will affect several units, including administrative and sales positions in some industrial activities.
The France Press agency, which advances the news citing a source from the unions, guarantees that the redundancies will affect the company’s central services, the subsidiaries dedicated to the corporate business and the subsidiary dedicated to radio frequency solutions.
The source cited by the agency also says that although the 1,000 planned redundancies concern France, similar measures may soon be announced for other countries.
TeK spoke with the Alcatel-Lucent spokesman in Portugal, who guarantees that there are no restructuring plans in the group for the local operation, where around 200 people currently work. The same source explains that over the past few years the Portuguese subsidiary has been the target of several measures that have prepared it better for more difficult times, which is why it has not been the target of interventions recently, nor is it expected to be in the near future .
The Alcatel-Lucent Portugal spokesman also stresses that the redundancies now announced in France are part of the plan already communicated by the company. The information that has now been passed on to the unions and that has finally been released to the press is just an update of figures within the scope of the initial plan announced. New redundancies are not contemplated in addition to those already planned.
In 2007, the company resulting from the merger between the French company Alcatel and the American company Lucent announced the dismissal of 12,500 employees. At the end of the same year, he admitted that during 2009 he might have to add another 4 thousand jobs to the number already announced. At the end of last year, the company’s CEO was talking about 6 thousand new jobs reduced, so that the company could achieve the annual savings necessary to recover levels of efficiency.
