Sprint Nextel has seen brighter days. The ailing US wireless carrier (still hanging on to the No. 3 spot) has announced that they’ll be cutting costs in an effort to ride out the tumultuous economic conditions rocking the US. When it comes to cutting costs, the payroll is usually the first place to look. Sprint Nextel says it will be cutting 6,000 jobs from its workforce, saving the company a cool $1.2 billion in operating costs every year. Sprint expects to complete their lay-off cycle by the end of March.
In addition to the cost-savings that will be realized from slashing its 
workforce by 14%, Sprint Nextel has announced that it will be continuing to suspend salary increases and will no longer be matching contributions to pension funds. It’s unclear how long Sprint will continue the pension and salary increase freezes, but given the economic forecast for 2009, Sprint may be looking to continue their cost-cutting initiatives into 2010.
This latest round of lay-offs from Sprint follows on the heels of a voluntary buy-out deal that had Sprint paying certain employees to voluntarily leave their posts. The “voluntary separation package,” as it was called, was followed up by Sprint CFO Bob Brust’s announcement that Sprint was gearing up for big job cuts in 2009. Brust was heard saying that Sprint would be making significant cuts to its workforce, and that the company would gladly “overshoot” their lay-off goals for the sake of cost-savings.
Turns out, Sprint’s job-cutting plans were just as big as they had warned.
Sprint is expected to do well with the exclusive launch of the Palm Pre. Coupled with cost-savings from Sprint’s various penny-pinching initiatives, Sprint may become the lean-and-mean machine they need to become to recover from financial hardship. Otherwise, we can’t see Sprint explorer red-ink territory for much longer.
[Via: MocoNews]