Doomsday has once again arrived for T-Mobile employees as company’s USA Chief Executive Philipp Humm announced through an office-wide memo today that a series of organizational changes will take place this week, resulting in a net loss of 350 900 jobs.
Though the number is a mere estimate, more jobs are expected to be affected as a result of the company restructuring, with more layoffs and outsourcing anticipated in the near future to help reduce costs. The announcement comes just two months after T-Mobile eliminated 1,900 jobs by closing seven call center facilities in various cities across the United States, though those employed in the remaining 17 centers will remain unaffected.
“It is important to emphasize these impacts to employees result from business decisions,” Humm writes. “Our rebuilt structure enables T-Mobile to realize significant savings, allowing us to invest in future growth — in particular modernizing our network to LTE, repositioning the T-Mobile brand, and aggressively pursuing the B2B segment where we plan to add 1,000 positions over the next few years.”
The restructuring will include consolidating roles and responsibilities to individuals, hoping the ‘reduction of layers’ between working teams and top level executives will allow for efficient and effective coordination. More details on the organizational changes will be revealed later in the week.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the state Employment Security Department had not yet received notification of a mass layoff from the company, which is required for layoffs exceeding 50 positions in a single location. T-Mobile currently employs 36,000 people nationwide with 4,800 employees based in its Bellevue, WA headquarter. It is not yet known where T-Mobile plans to eliminate jobs, but a spokesperson confirmed the job cuts will affect all departments and employees will be contacted personally if selected for layoffs.
Still, the significance of this restructure is not a clear representation of T-Mobile’s future. The company reported an additional 187,000 subscribers in the first quarter after a loss of more than 525,000 over the holiday season. Last week, Bloomberg also reported that T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom had been looking to merge with the contract-free carrier MetroPCS, with the possibility of combining to become a public company. The announcement comes after Deutsche Telekom said it would continue to look for partners despite the utter failure at the merger deal between T-Mobile and AT&T. Thanks to AT&T’s completely sour attitude about the collapse, we anticipate a whole lot of mobile drama to come forth if the deal goes through.
Update by Jeffrey VC 5/17/2012: T-Mobile has clarified that only 350 net jobs will be lost as T-Mobile will hire an additional 550 people in different areas during this restructuring.
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