French minister brands Alcatel job cuts excessive

France’s Minister for Industrial Renewal on Tuesday criticised Alcatel-Lucent’s plan to cut more than 900 jobs in France.

Reuters/Stephane Mahe

Arnaud Montebourg told the French National Assembly that he had asked Alcatel-Lucent to cut the number of planned redundancies from the ten per cent announced for France, which he labelled “excessive.”

The company announced 10,000 job losses worldwide on Tuesday.

Montebourg told MPs that he had told Alcatel boss Michel Combs at at meeting on 3 October that he thought France was paying too heavy a toll in the company’s re-structuring plan.

According to French newspaper Les Echos, sites in the cities of Rennes and Toulouse will close and plants elsewhere will be sold.

The Franco-American telecom equipment company hopes to reduce costs by 15 per cent within two years and focus on new technologies.

It has lurched from crisis to crisis since it was formed in a merger between Alcatel of France and US company Lucent Technologies in 2006.