BT will axe up to 15,000 more jobs

12 April 2012

Telecoms giant BT has revealed plans to axe up to 15,000 posts in the coming year - 10% of its workforce.

The firm said it had already slashed 15,000 jobs in the last 12 months, 5,000 more than expected, as it unveiled pre-tax losses of £134 million for the year to March 31.

BT said it was aiming to cut the jobs through natural wastage, non replacement and voluntary redundancy and had no plans for compulsory lay-offs.

But the scale of the losses was grim news for the economy, coming just days after unemployment jumped by almost a quarter of a million to 2.2 million.

Chief executive Ian Livingston said BT would do all it could to protect the jobs of its permanent staff despite the scale of the cuts, pledging that some workers would be redeployed and retrained and could even take up a BT apprenticeship.

There will be a "substantial" reduction in recruitment this year and fewer apprentices will be taken on, said Mr Livingstone. He also revealed that 2,000 jobs came back from India in the last year in a reverse of the outsourcing drive followed by many British companies.

BT said its workforce fell from 162,000 to 147,000 in the year to March, 5,000 more than predicted, with the extra cuts largely among agency staff.

The company said it had worked very closely with its unions to ensure that alternative work is found for any members of staff who didn't volunteer for redundancy but whose position has gone, adding that more than 2,000 staff have been found alternative work within BT.

Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said: "Fifteen thousand is a very challenging level of job losses, especially on the back of last year's reductions. We expect the majority of job losses to be third party - contractors and agency staff - as they were last year with many jobs being lost outside of the UK. However this is a serious day for staff at BT.

"We're working closely with the company to ensure any losses are voluntary and we're looking at new ways of finding new work and retaining permanent employees, including secondment agreements."

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