The headquarters of British telephone group British Telecom (BT) in London in a picture taken on March 10, 2017.
British telephones group BT announced on Thursday it would cut 55,000 jobs by 2030 after two years of cuts in a tough economic context.
“By the end of 2020, BT Group will have a much tighter workforce and significantly lower costs,” CEO Philip Jansson said in a statement.
This represents up to 42% of the 130,000 people employed by BT, either directly or through intermediaries.
The group said on Thursday that its cost reduction plan, implemented from April 2020, is on track, with “gross savings of £2.1bn” ($2.6bn), getting closer to its target of £3bn.
In its financial year closed at the end of March, BT saw its turnover fall by 1% to £20.7 billion, despite a 4% increase registered by its subsidiary OpenReach, in charge of fiber optics deployments in the United Kingdom.
Its net profit grew a sharp 50%, but this was mainly due to a one-off tax credit partly linked to the sale of the BT Sports television channel.
Its pre-tax profit fell 12% to £1.7bn.
His compatriot and mobile phone rival Vodafone on Tuesday announced 11,000 job cuts over the next three years in a bid to boost its competitiveness following unsatisfactory results.
This represents just over 10% of Vodafone’s workforce of 104,000 employees in 2022.
These announcements of job cuts are part of a context of crisis in the United Kingdom due to the skyrocketing cost of living, with inflation that has not fallen below 10% – the highest in the G7 – and economic uncertainty.
