If the site of Sophia Antipolis doesn’t seem to be affected by this second redundancy scheme, the French workforce of the American giant will decrease from 1,300 to less than 800 people.
The site of Rouen is not operating anymore, the one of Plessis-Robinson is affected, Cesson-Sévigné near Rennes is transferred to Lannion : these sites will be affected by the reorganization of Lucent. This reorganization will entail 410 lay-offs, out of the 1,300 jobs the American giant provides in France. Moreover, there will be an additional 140 jobs shed in the Wireless Access Solutions sector, since it was recently sold. In total, there is more than 40% of the French workforce laid-off. Thus, less than 800 people are still employed.
This French redundancy scheme set on a worldwide scale last July 24th was announced this morning during a works council at the French head office of the group at Plessis-Robinson (Haut-de-Seine). The French Riviera, where nearly a third of the workforce was laid-off by a first redundancy scheme implemented in January 2001, should not be affected this time.
About one hundred jobs already shed on the French Riviera
In France, Lucent is established on seven sites: Sophia Antipolis, Le Plessis-Robinson, and La Défense in the Paris area, Deville-lès-Rouen in Seine-Maritime, Lannion in the Côtes d’Armor and Cesson-Sévigné near Rennes, Saumur in the Maine-et-Loire. The site of the French Riviera was very affected by the first redundancy scheme (19,000 lay-offs decided in January 2001 on a worldwide scale).
The Octel department in Nice (about sixty people) was not operating anymore and the call center in Sophia-Antipolis was transferred to Ireland (about forty people). The establishment on the French Riviera decreased, from 300 to 200 (see article "Lucent Technologies sheds about one hundred jobs on the French Riviera").
The UMTS incubator project keeps on being operated
This time, the second restructuring announced at the end of July accounts for 15 up to 20,000 additional lay-offs on a worldwide scale in order to face the slowdown of the activity in telecommunications. The answer was thus given on Wednesday for the repercussions in France for this second redundancy scheme. In addition to the 410 jobs shed, the 140 jobs of the WAS sector (Wireless Access Solutions) which was sold on August 1st to the Canadian SR Telecom Inc. The agreement will be concluded at the end of August and representatives of Lucent have declared that they didn’t know the number of employees who will be re-employed on the 140.
In Sophia-Antipolis, if the activity of Lucent has decreased, (as the one of Nortel, another big telecom components manufacturer), projects remain on the way to be realized. Thus the e-services department of Lucent keeps on with its project of UMTS incubator in partnership with CI Com Organization (ex-administrator of the CICA in Sophia). It aims at gathering 15 up to 20 companies working on third generation telephony services on 2,300 square meters at the Algorithmes within the premises of Lucent. Nowadays, these start-ups will develop the most promising technologies in the future (vocal recognition, multimedia diffusion, management of the customer relation, etc).