Rumors: Alcatel-Lucent might be considering massive job cuts

French weekly L’Expansion has reported that the telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent is currently considering cutting as much as 20 percent of its world-wide staff.

If this is true, this could result in job cuts for as many as 15-20,000 workers in the company.

France alone could see job cuts for around 2000 workers. Alcatel declined to comment on this rumor in the market.

L’Expansion further said that the combined entity had earlier planned to cut 10% of the combined workforce.

Jean-Baptiste Triquet, a representative at Alcatel of the CFDT union was quoted as saying: “The figure is enormous and so is the range (between the estimates). If that were the case it would be an admission that the merger is a failure. Those sorts of job cuts would cause a scandal.”

Alcatel-Lucent is due to publish its full 2006 results on Friday.

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