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Technology Stocks : Winstar Comm. (WCII) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SteveG who wrote (3508)	1/22/1998 2:26:00 PM
From: SteveG	Respond to of 12468

<A> Huge Job Cuts Likely Part Of AT&T Chmn's Turnaround Plans By Shawn Young (note second to last sentence) NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--AT&T Corp. (T) Chairman and Chief Executive C. Michael Armstrong is likely to announce significant job cuts as he takes aim at AT&T's bloated costs in an effort to turn the beleaguered titan around. He is expected to pare away as much as 15% of the company's work force of about 133,000, the online edition of the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people close to the company. Armstrong, who took the reins in November, will meet with Wall Street analysts Monday to outline his plans for nation's largest long-distance company. In addition to job cuts, analysts expect Armstrong to lay out new earnings targets, restructuring plans and strategies for competing in new markets. Armstrong came to New York-based AT&T from Hughes Electronics, a unit of General Motors Corp. (GM), where he slashed the payroll and transformed the business from a sluggish defense contractor into a lean communications and satellite business. Armstrong already has said cost-cutting will be one of his priorities at AT&T. Analysts expect spending cuts of at least $3 to $5 billion over the next few years, and that can't be done without job cuts, they said. "Clearly there are going to be some layoffs," said Lehman Brothers Inc. analyst Blake Bath. Analysts are expecting work force reductions of at least 10% and there are rumors that as much as 30% of the staff may be laid off or encouraged to take early retirement, analysts said. In 1996, the company announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs over three years, but so far it has cut just 8,000, the company said in December. Since AT&T has added new jobs in the interim, its payroll now has 133,000 employees, compared with 129,600 at the end of 1995. Cuts are necessary and healthy for AT&T, said Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Stephanie Comfort. "The cost structure has been so bloated for so long that there should be some low-hanging fruit," Comfort said. However, she said, cuts in the 30% range could hamper the company's ability to compete as it faces increasingly large and lean competitors in its traditional long-distance business and in new areas such as Internet and local. An AT&T spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's plans.