British Telecom announces massive job cut

LONDON,UK: Telecom major British Telecom (BT) announced on Thursday that it would cut 10,000 jobs by March 2009, following an 11 per cent dip in its profit after tax for the first half of the current financial year.

According to the company sources, around 4000 employees directly recruited by BT will lose their job and the remaining 6000 would be from contractors, consultants and agency staff. The retrenchment move is mainly aimed at reducing its dependence on consultants and contractors, BT said.

Though the company has a large offshore presence in India, the company said the retrenchment decision would not affect BT’s Indian operations.

“The Indian operations would not see any retrenchment. The majority of the job cuts is UK-based. It is too early to know country-specific job cuts,” said a company spokesperson.

BT has a global workforce of 160,000. According to reports, British unemployment stood at 1.82 million at the end of the second quarter of the financial year, which is the highest in the last 11 years.

Analysts forecast the unemployment would reach 3.3 million by 2011. BT has collaborations with Tech Mahindra, HCL, Infosys, TCS and Wipro.

Tech Mahindra, has got a seven-year contract worth nearly Rs 9,760 crore from BT and the company currently derives nearly 60 per cent of its revenue from BT projects.