Major restructuring drive
British Telecom is about to announce huge job cuts as part of its restructuring into two new units: BT Design and BT Operations. According to the Times the move is part of BT's ongoing mission to morph from a telecoms company into an IT services provider.
Initially, BT said that there would be no redundancies and no job cuts; all it would mean was that 20,000 employees from existing divisions would move into the new units. However, according to the Times, the reorganization was "...always going to entail job losses."
Now the official line is that "No-one will be forced out of a job." There will be redundancy packages, early retirement and other methods. Citigroup analysts think that the cost of such packages could account for £230m of the £450m cost of the reorganization.