LEX Thirty thousand jobs in two years. Ian Livingston is unlikely to go down as BT’s most popular chief executive, but he has hardly shirked unpleasant decisions. The pain, though, is not falling evenly on what was, at the end of 2008, a 162,000-strong workforce. As ever, it is the people who are contractually easiest to fire who leave first. Two-thirds of the 15,000 jobs axed last year were held by non-permanent staff, one-third of the workforce. Temporary staff now account for 29 per cent of the total and, assuming the same mix of departures this year, will account for only a quarter of the remaining 132,000 employees by Christmas.
Change is coming. That landlines fail now only once every 13 years as opposed to every nine has saved a million engineer visits, for example. But all of BT can still be made to work much more efficiently. And with its other three divisions producing decent operating profits, it is global services, the cause of about £2bn of charges last year, that needs to change fastest. Mr Livingston is confident that these latest write-downs to the value of two large and hugely underpriced contracts will draw a line under the division’s problems. Investors should hold him to that commitment.
