Lucent Sophia: the threat of other redundancies

Losses of the telecom equipment supplier Lucent have increased again for the fourth quarter of its financial year 2000-2001 ending end of September. It reached 909 million dollars, a figure included in the low rate of previsions which were already pessimistic. These losses are enormous if you add restructuring costs and losses due to the end of some activities. The term bill thus reached 8.8 billion dollars!

As a consequence, redundancies are planned on a worldwide scale. After two waves of lay-offs undertaken at the beginning and middle of the year, Lucent plans to lay-off another 15 to 20,000 jobs by the end of December. The number of employees will be now of 60,000 (about 110,000 in January 2001). For Lucent Sophia Antipolis, where about at least one hundred jobs were cut this year (out of 300), it is a new threat.