Another 7,000 Positions to Be Cut, GTE Says : Improving Technology Behind Firm’s Decision

GTE Corp. handed its employees more unwelcome news Thursday, saying it expects to eliminate about 14,000 jobs in its domestic telephone operations over the next five years.

In addition to the 7,000 jobs that the company announced Wednesday would be eliminated as a result of a corporate overhaul, GTE said an equal number of positions would be lost as a result of improving technology and related factors separate from the streamlining program.

“It’s really business-as-usual occurrences. As you become more proficient and learn to do things in better ways, you have some down-sizing,” said Carole Barns, a spokeswoman for the Stamford-based corporation.

A spokeswoman for GTE California, a GTE unit based in Thousand Oaks, said it is not possible to say how many positions will be lost in California.

GTE executives discussed the planned cutbacks during the company’s biannual meeting with analysts at the corporation’s management development center in Norwalk.

Not Just Staff Positions

On the eve of the meeting, the company had announced that restructuring of the telephone operations would reduce the size of the work force to a total of about 78,000 by 1992, partly through dismissals and early retirements.

GTE said virtually all of those reductions would come from the ranks of the 28,000 employees in staff and headquarters management positions that do not have direct contact with customers.

The company had also said additional job reductions would occur during the next five years as a result of changes unrelated to restructuring, primarily modernization because of new technologies. But it did not indicate the size of that cutback--an additional 7,000--until Thursday.

The cutbacks will not be limited to staff positions, Barns said.

GTE had announced plans in March to streamline its telephone operations to continue improving the quality of service and to become faster, more flexible and responsive to customer requirements.

The streamlining involves folding seven GTE operating companies into four units and shifting the telephone business headquarters from Stamford to a site in either California, Texas, Indiana or Florida. Speculation centers on the Dallas area, but the company is not expected to make an announcement until later this month or in December.

GTE Corp. employs about 161,000 people in 44 states and 38 foreign countries.