Nortel, Alcatel and Corning cut jobs

UK workers at Nortel are expecting the axe to fall after the company said today that it needed to shed 20,000 more staff on top of the 30,000 it announced a few months ago.

The Maidenhead company employs 5000 people in the UK and a company spokesman said the job losses would come from the sale of "non-core" businesses.

Nortel expects to post a record third-quarter loss of £2.5bn as sales of telecom equipment plummeted after the end of the dotcom boom.

Meanwhile, French networking equipment manufacturer Alcatel said yesterday that it was cutting 650 staff from its underwater cable manufacturing operation in Greenwich, London.

Fibre optic giant Corning has issued a profit warning and announced worldwide job cuts for an additional 12,000 people. This is on top of the 8000 previously announced.