800 jobs to go at Marconi

Telecoms equipment manufacturer Marconi has announced that 800 jobs are to go in the UK.

450 jobs are expected to go at the firm’s site in Coventry and another 350 are expected to be lost in Liverpool. Marconi currently employs around 4,300 in the UK.

The announcement comes after the company’s failure to secure a new contract with BT.

BT is one of Marconi’s biggest customers and there had already had been suggestions that jobs would go at the firm, following the announcement that Marconi had failed to win a contract for BT’s new £10 billion network upgrade. It had initially been feared that as many as 2,000 jobs could have been at risk.

Marconi also announced plans to combine its current product units with its regional business organisations in order to create four geographic “centres of excellence” in Europe and North America. The new centres – called SoftSwitch in Northern Europe, Wireless in Central Europe, Optical & Access Networks in Southern Europe and Data Networks in North America – would lead to significant cost savings, Marconi said, but would involve the dismantling of much of the UK-based central Operations organisation.

Mike Parton, CEO of Marconi, said: “We are committed to maintaining and improving the products and services we provide to our customers. The new leaner organisation that we have announced today allows us to maintain our product roadmaps, focusing our Research & Development expenditure on our key product lines whilst making significant cost savings mainly in overhead areas to underpin profitability.”

The jobs cuts have been criticised by trade union, Amicus. Peter Skyte, Amicus’ national officer, said: “This is a big blow for the company, its workforce and highly skilled jobs which the UK cannot afford to lose. Given that the company would not tell us anything two days ago about their plans for job cuts, this is a cynical ploy to put out bad news on the day of the general election results.”

However, Marconi spokesperson David Beck denied this was the case and told reporters that the announcement had been made in order to spare employees from “another weekend of uncertainty”.

(KMcA/SP)