Struggling French telecom gearmaker Alcatel-Lucent

                                       will lay off nearly 1,000 employees, or 9% of its India workforce,

                                           as part of a global restructuring drive to cut costs.

KOLKATA: Struggling French telecom gearmaker Alcatel-Lucent will lay off nearly 1,000 employees, or 9% of its India workforce, as part of a global restructuring drive to cut costs as deals dry up and demand for network equipment plunges, two senior executives aware of the matter told ET.

Bulk of the cull is likely to impact Alcatel-Lucent India`s key business support functions and its people-centric managed services vertical where nearly 7,000 employees are engaged primarily in maintaining and managing Reliance Communications` countrywide CDMA and GSM networks and Bharti Airtel`s landline and broadband networks.

In July, the Paris-based phone equipment supplier had said it would cut 5,000 jobs across global units as part of an organisational rejig to optimise costs, becoming the second European networks vendor to announce staff reduction plans after Nokia Siemens Networks said it would axe 17,000 jobs globally to trim losses.

Alcatel-Lucent, in response to ET`s specific queries, did not reveal the employee count reduction target in India as it is yet to conclude mandatory consultations with unions, but two people privy to the developments said the restructuring exercise, internally classified as `Performance Programme`, could trigger sizeable redundancies in India.

"We will not comment on specific details of the Performance Programme as it affects people, until we have completed the legally-required consultations with workers` representatives," said an Alcatel-Lucent spokesman, adding that the restructuring exercise would not impact its 3,500-strong India R&D staff distributed across Bangalore, Chennai and Gurgaon hubs.