Monday, March 06, 2006

Do All Mergers Equal Job Losses

From the AP:

NEW YORK - AT&T Inc. plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, mostly through attrition, if its $67 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp. goes through, AT&T's chief financial officer said Monday.

The work force reduction would take place over three years, AT&T's Rick Lindner said on a conference call. The acquisition is expected to close next year, pending approval from shareholders and regulators.

Before the cuts, the combined company would have around 317,000 employees, including Cingular Wireless LLC, which is now an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture.

The 10,000 planned cuts are in addition to the 26,000 job cuts AT&T has already announced — 13,000 due to SBC's acquisition of AT&T Corp., which closed in November, and 13,000 due to "operational initiatives." The combined SBC-AT&T took the name AT&T Inc.

OK. That's a total of 36,000 jobs lost due to mergers involving AT&T. Wonder how many of those are going overseas?