Lucent to Cut Up to 20,000 More JobsAmerican Lucent Technologies (LU) plans to cut another 15,000 to 20,000 jobs from its payroll and is eliminating its dividend in a bid to return to profitability.The announcement Tuesday came as the embattled telecommunications maker posted a fiscal third-quarter loss of $3.25 billion, far wider than expectations. Separately, Lucent said it had reached an agreement to sell its fiber-optics operations to Furukawa Electric and Corning for a total of $2.75 billion, part of two separate deals it announced Tuesday. Lucent also said it is eliminating its 2-cent quarterly dividend beginning Sept. 1, in a move the company said would free up $68 million a quarter. Since late 1999, Lucent has experienced slumping sales as it lost business to competitors that brought faster, new telecommunications gear to market quicker. The national economic slowdown has added to Lucent's problems, as many customers have cut back on spending and others who owe the company for equipment have filed for bankruptcy. Lucent has responded by slashing jobs and selling off parts of the company. When this next round is complete, the massive restructuring will leave a streamlined Lucent with less than half of the payroll it had at the beginning of the year. Lucent has already cut its work force by 19,000 jobs since January, leaving it with about 87,000 employees ¡ª and that number doesn't include the more than 15,000 jobs that left Lucent fold when it spun off semiconductor and optical components division Agere Systems into a separate company earlier this year. On top of the new round of planned cuts, Lucent will trim an additional 6,000 jobs with the sale of its fiber-optics operations and another 4,500 with the sale of manufacturing assets at two plants. |
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