AT&T LIKELY TO CUT 5,000 MORE
October 2, 2003 -- AT&T Corp., the biggest U.S. long-distance telephone carrier, will probably eliminate about 5,000 more jobs, or 7 percent of its work force, as prices and demand fall, said Chief Financial Officer Thomas Horton.
AT&T, which eliminated a total of 10,000 positions in 2001 and 2002, is cutting 5,000 non-management jobs this year.
"I would suspect that we'll continue down that path and produce that sort of reduction again for the foreseeable future," Horton said at a Goldman Sachs conference for investors in New York.
AT&T, with 71,000 workers at the end of last year, has been cutting costs and debt in its fourth straight year of sales declines, because of a glut of network capacity in the U.S. and job cuts by corporate customers. Sales at the Bedminster, New Jersey-based company fell 8.2 percent to $8.8 billion in the second quarter, a 14-year low.
"We've yet to see any signs that telecom demand is improving and have actually observed an increase in pricing pressure coming out of the third quarter," AT&T Chief Executive Officer David Dorman said of the company's main business-services unit.
Shares of AT&T fell 24 cents finishing at $21.31 |
