Friday 14 February 2003 France Telecom job cuts  | The French telecommunications business, France Telecom, is to cut thirteen thousand jobs worldwide. French trade unions fear more jobs could be lost. The job cuts are part of a rescue plan under which the state-controlled company is to receive extra money backed by the government. Patrick Bartlett sent this report. |
 Listen to the story France Telecom is not alone among Europe's telecommunications firms in announcing large-scale cutbacks. It's part of a massive blood-letting in an industry which invested wildly during the stock market boom, only to see its assets crash as new wireless services failed to live up to the hype. France Telecom's new boss, Thierry Breton, has said seven and a half of the thirteen thousand job cuts will be in France, the remainder at its overseas businesses. Still majority-owned by the French government, France Telecom has been struggling to reduce a seventy billion euro debt mountain. To avoid a threatened break-up of the business the government agreed a complex refinancing package. But the deal involves a fifteen billion euro cash injection, and may yet fall foul of regulators in Brussels. They're investigating whether it breaches EU state aid rules. Among its many overseas operations, France Telecom owns the Orange mobile phone company in Britain, and Mobistar in Belgium. Late last year, it provoked a row between the French and German governments, when, amid mounting losses, it pulled out of Germany's Mobilcom. The move left thousands of workers there in limbo, just days before Germany's federal elections.
Listen to the words Cutbacks Reductions in amounts of money, people and resources blood-letting The former medical practice of treating sick people by removing some of their blood. Here used metaphorically – the removal of people from the ‘sick’ industry in an attempt to make it healthy. live up to to keep to the high standards set by hype the promotion of someone or something by using intensive or extravagant methods of publicity struggling trying very hard but gradually failing cash injection input of extra money fall foul of if you do something which falls foul of someone or something you do something which gets you into trouble with them breaches breaks in limbo if you are in limbo you are in a situation where you do not know what will happen next and you have no control over things.  Read more about this story | |  | | | SEARCH IN LEARNING ENGLISH | | | |
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