At&T; To Eliminate Up To 18,000 Jobs

Hired three months ago to turn around AT&T, Chairman C. Michael Armstrong on Monday detailed a cost-cutting drive to slash up to 18,000 jobs, freeze executive salaries and shake up management.

AT&T Corp., which is cutting up to 14 percent of its 128,000-person work force, combined the reductions with new investments aimed at shoring up sagging revenues. The nation’s largest telecommunications company plans to boost its capacity to carry Internet and data traffic, offer telephone service across the Internet and sell a new type of mobile-phone service.

The company announced Armstrong’s blueprint after disclosing that quarterly profits fell 18 percent in the fourth quarter, dragged down in part by the latest drop in revenue from the company’s core long-distance phone business.

Still, the results beat Wall Street forecasts, helped by unexpectedly aggressive cost-cutting under Armstrong, and several analysts praised the new chairman’s shake-up as tough but needed medicine. Armstrong, hired in October to revamp AT&T, tempered the job cuts by offering generous incentive packages.