A plan aiming at laying off 550 employees and at restructuring the sites is currently under way at Nortel France. It could lead to the total or partial closure of its branch at Sophia.
Nortel Networks' redundancy and restructuring plan of the French branches owned by the Canadian telecom subcontractor could strongly hit Sophia Antipolis (About 300 employees for Nortel). Nortel France's works council had already announced a restructuring plan at the beginning of September. The tragic events of September 11th in the United States have obviously not made the activity to recover.
On the site of Boursorama (see article "Nortel Networks is considering to lay-off 500 up to 550 employees in France"), it is mentioned that "this restructuring could lead to the closure of branches in Marne la Vallée, Valbonne (partially or the overall), Guyancourt or Courbevoie, and Rennes. Transfers in progress to other sites would be finalized". Thus, most of the main branches owned by the subcontractor would be hit since it is mainly established in Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne), Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine), Guyancourt, Chateaufort (Yvelines), Sophia Antipolis, town of Valbonne in the Alpes Maritimes, Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) and Chateaudun (Finistère).
In total, 500 up to 550 jobs would be shed in France out of approximately 7,700 recorded at the end of 2000, at a time when the Canadian group was employing many people. These redundancies (350 at Nortel Networks and 200 at Matra) are less numerous than what was feared at the beginning of the month (the daily newspaper "Le Monde" was announcing about 800 lay-offs). Nevertheless, the end of the branch owned by Nortel at Sophia, if it was confirmed, would be a hard blow for the French Riviera.
The means of these restructurings in progress should be discussed with unions and management on the next days to come. Thus, the future of Nortel Networks on the science park should be known.