Swisscom wields axe in bid to streamline operations

Swisscom is cutting more jobs as part of an ongoing restructuring process Keystone

The country's biggest telecommunications company, Swisscom, is shedding more jobs as it continues its policy of slimming down to concentrate on its core businesses.

The former state monopoly is to close 17 regional logistics centres across the country with the loss of 165 jobs.

The country’s biggest telecommunications company, Swisscom, is shedding more jobs as it continues its policy of slimming down to concentrate on its core businesses. The former state monopoly is to close seventeen regional logistics centres across the country with the loss of 165 jobs.

Swisscom says the decision is inevitable following the emergence of new technologies and the evolution of the telecommunications market. The centres will cease operations between September this year and June 2001.

Workers affected will benefit from a social plan negotiated with employees’ associations in May 1999.

The announcement is the latest in a series that have seen Swisscom cut around a quarter of its staff. In March, it announced plans to get rid of 6,000 jobs between 2001 and 2003, although half of these are being externalised.

A further 2,000 new jobs are being created in new branches such as e-business. Swisscom says it is reacting to an increasingly competitive market since the sector’s liberalisation at the beginning of 1998.

At the end of 1999, Swisscom employed 21,777 people. This includes those who work for the German mobile operator, Debitel, in which Swisscom has a 74 per cent stake.

swissinfo with agencies