ABOUT 250 BT staff in York face an anxious wait after the telecoms giant announced it was axing up to 15,000 jobs in the coming year – ten per cent of its workforce.

BT said it aimed to cut the jobs through natural wastage, non replacement and voluntary redundancy and had no plans for compulsory lay-offs.

The news comes after 15,000 posts were shed from the firm last year – 5,000 more than expected.

BT, which has a global workforce of 147,000, said it had predicted a reduction of 10,000, but said the extra cuts largely came from agency staff.

“Like last year, we anticipate job reductions to be peppered around the globe, rather than concentrated in any particular location,” said a BT spokesperson.

“BT has no plans to introduce compulsory redundancies. Among other things, we will be looking at voluntary redundancy schemes where appropriate and not replacing the several thousand employees who leave BT every year.”

The latest jobs blow comes after BT announced pre-tax losses of £134 million for the year to March 31.

Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said: “15,000 is a very challenging level of job losses, especially on the back of last year’s reductions.

“We expect the majority of job losses to be third party – contractors and agency staff – as they were last year with many jobs being lost outside of the UK. However, this is a serious day for staff at BT.

“We’re working closely with the company to ensure any losses are voluntary and we’re looking at new ways of finding new work and retaining permanent employees, including secondment agreements.”

BT said that last year it worked very closely with its unions to ensure that alternative work was found for any members of staff who didn’t volunteer for redundancy but whose position had gone.

The spokesman said: “Our aim is to work closely with the unions to reduce BT’s total labour cost, of both direct and indirect staff, as this is critical to the success of the company going forward.”