AT&T will cut staff by 12,000

AT&T said Thursday it plans to cut 12,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force, but gave no indication whether any of the 20,000 employees in metro Atlanta would be part of those cuts.

The Dallas-based telecommunications company —- the nation’s largest —- said the job cuts will take place in December and throughout 2009.

The cuts include management and nonmanagement jobs and will be made in many parts of the business and in nearly every geographic area, AT&T spokeswoman Dawn Benton said. Beyond that, she said she did not have specific information on whether any jobs in metro Atlanta would be eliminated.

“We are not breaking out numbers by business unit or geography,” she said.

The company said it would still hire in 2009 for jobs in the wireless, video and broadband Internet divisions. AT&T Mobility, the company’s wireless unit, is based in Atlanta. The city is also home to a testing lab for U-verse, AT&T’s video product that was launched to compete with cable TV.

AT&T Mobility was the shining star during the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call, adding 2 million wireless subscribers during the past three months.

Some employees of the company’s landline operation —- once the core of AT&T’s business —- are in Atlanta, as well.

Like most telecom companies, AT&T has been losing landline customers in favor of wireless services.

AT&T bought Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. in 2006. Executives said at the time the combined company would shed 10,000 jobs over a three-year period.

The layoffs announced Thursday are not related to those cuts.

At the time of the merger, BellSouth had 63,000 employees, including 15,000 in metro Atlanta.

In addition to layoffs, the company also said Thursday that it plans to reduce capital spending next year.

AT&T plans to take a charge of about $600 million in the fourth quarter to pay for severance costs. The company noted that many of its nonmanagement employees have guaranteed jobs because of union contracts. All affected workers will receive severance “in accordance with management policies or union agreements,” the company said.

This is the second time this year that AT&T has announced job cuts. The company said in April it planned to cut 4,600 jobs, or 1.5 percent of its work force, as the company continued to streamline operations. Most of the cuts were to be in AT&T’s landline telephone business as well as in management and corporate staff, a spokesman said at the time.

Those cuts were a result of a March announcement that AT&T was switching from a regionalized structure to a national one to make its landline, DSL and video offerings more universal. The company said at that time that some management jobs would be cut to avoid duplication of duties.

The company completed most of the cuts announced in April, but the 10,000 cuts planned after the merger “are an ongoing process,” said Walt Sharp, another AT&T spokesman.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.