Huge job losses at Ericsson

SWEDEN/GLOBAL: Faced with a continuing recession in the telecommunications industry, and a 40 per cent drop in orders in the first three months of this year, Ericsson, the giant transnational telecom company, announced yesterday, April 22, that it plans to cut 20,000 jobs, or one-fourth of its current total workforce worldwide, in a drastic cost-savings programme. The company, the world's biggest supplier of mobile phone networks, will cut 10,000 jobs in 2002 - of which 3,000 have already been made - and another 10,000 in 2003. Many of these losses will be in Sweden. Ericsson already reduced its workforce by 22,000 jobs in 2001, or one-fifth of the workforce at that time. In a comment for the Swedish Metalworkers' magazine "Dagens Arbete", the chairman of the enterprise union at Ericsson, Arne Lofving, says that he cannot tell whether the announced cuts are necessary or not. But the union strongly opposes the ongoing outsourcing policy of Ericsson and says that the company has not been able to present figures showing that outsourcing is profitable.