The cuts will amount to 6.1 percent of SBC’s workforce of 165,000 employees and will come through attrition and layoffs, the company said. They come on top of 7,000 jobs SBC plans to cut this year as well.
The company did not say which divisions would be directly affected, but an SBC spokesman, Michael Coe, acknowledged that businesses that were not growing would probably lose jobs while those that are growing might see increases.
SBC has more than 50 million phone lines in 13 states. A company spokesman, Larry Solomon, said the job cuts «will be across geographies and across business units.» Solomon said the company might add workers in growing parts of its business as part of an ongoing effort to adjust its workforce to business conditions. BC said it had 165,520 employees as of Sept. 30, down from 172,540 a year earlier. SBC has been losing phone lines as customers replace traditional lines with cellular phones and In general, SBC and the other Bell operating companies — Verizon Communications, the largest phone company; BellSouth; and Qwest — have been reducing the size of their Conversely, other parts of their business, like providing The Bell companies also have started expanding their BellSouth, the SBC did not say how much money it expected to save through the job cuts, although some industry analysts expect more than $1 billion in potential savings. Bloomberg News contributed to this report.