By Dominic Maher, 10 November 2000 00:30
NEWS The company decided to axe approximately 100 workers at its technical and operations department in Maidenhead, England, and its corporate headquarters in London, as part of a restructuring process which will see it turn to outsourcing to maintain its infrastructure. Nortel is understood to have picked up the contract. FirstMark already has wireless licences in six countries and is one of the nine companies in the auction for fixed wireless broadband radio spectrum licences in the UK, due to start this morning. The company has raised $1bn to fund a broadband wireless network across Europe. Donal Byrne, senior VP and chief marketing officer at FirstMark, said the sole reason for the job losses was internal restructuring, and added that redundant employees will be given the chance of replacement posts in other branch offices located in Brussels, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland.. He said: "Workers who are willing to entertain positions in other European countries will be given the chance to do so. We have had a hard time recruiting into each country so this decision could be of some help but we'll have to get through the 30-day period first." Although no workers are guaranteed replacement jobs, Byrne defended the decision explaining that they have always outsourced various parts of its IT operations and are currently looking at more outsourcing options. Clive Longbottom, service director at research firm quocirca, said: "The idea of sending workers to another country sounds a little far-fetched. It sounds as if it's a case of not wanting workers being paid £100,000 a year when all they need is 'grease monkeys' to keep the network ticking over."
In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.
Log in or create your silicon.com account below