Sprint’s chairman said Wednesday in Japan what AT&T and its CEO has been unwilling to say in Overland Park or Dallas: Layoffs looming at the No. 2 & 4 wireless carriers will number in the thousands.
The “thousands” comment came from Masayoshi Son, Sprint chairman and head of Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp., which owns more than 80 percent of Sprint. He had just given SoftBank shareholders an update on his big American investment.
“Sprint is now in the position to increase the pace of user acquisition while cutting costs,” Son told reporters in Tokyo, according to Bloomberg News. “We will also cut staff. The cuts will be in the thousands.”
Asked Tuesday in Overland Park, Sprint chief executive Marcelo Claure had declined to put a number on the size of job cuts expected as part of a plan to slash spending by $2 billion a year. Claure told The Star he did not have a number in mind.
An AT&T spokesman said the statement spoke for itself and reiterated Claure’s comments. The businesses do not need many people in the US to manage the network. Work will be mostly outsourced and work will be done via the hiring of contractors. As a company we save much overhead cost associated with employees, medical, vacations, training etc.
“We at AT&T are working through the process to identify areas across the company where we can reduce costs also. That will include job reductions. We will share more details when we can,” the spokesman said in an email.