The dark side of Alcatel-Lucent

"Alcatel-Lucent is dedicated to act in a socially responsible way in its interactions with all stakeholders: employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, investors, rating agencies, NGOs and local communities. "

For those who worked for Lucent Australia these words must seem rather hypocritical and hollow. We recently stumbled over a thread in an Australian forum that tells a rather unpleasant story:

Alcatel-Lucent

• Sacked half the Lucent workforce in Australia with the prospect of more to come and
• cut their salaries by 30%.

Not that this behaviour is restricted to Australia. In the USA, the CWA, the trade union in Lucent USA, has no details of the layoffs yet. Alcatel-Lucent has created a subsidiary called "Lucent Government Services" to handle all the United States federal Contracts. All union members were moved out of the company to keep it union free. The CWA is fighting these actions both legally and politically.

Soon, on March 16th 2007, the European Works Council at Alcatel-Lucent, ECID, will be meeting management for a meeting on the layoffs. This is a good opportunity to raise this issue. If the newspaper reports are correct, the CEO from Alcatel-Lucent, Pat Russo ("Miss Management"), will be present at the meeting.

What is currently happening in Australis, the USA and most probably elsewhere outside Europe concerns all of us. This is the dark side of Alcatel-Lucent - its real face if confronted by weak unions. We must see to it that we don't end up being treated the same way. Such activities must be nipped in the bud. This is what solidarity is all about.