AT&T; to cut 4,600 positions

AT&T; Inc. on Friday said it planned to cut about 4,600 jobs, or 1.5% of its workforce, to shift resources to growing parts of its business.

The nation’s largest telecommunications provider said most of the layoffs would be among managers, particularly in wireline operations, including local phone service and service for large corporate customers. Jobs in corporate functions such as finance will also be cut.

“Even with the reductions announced today, we expect our head count overall to remain stable this year as we hire additional employees to support growth areas like wireless and TV,” spokesman Michael Coe said.

The San Antonio-based company said in a regulatory filing that it planned to take a $374-million first-quarter pretax charge against earnings because of the job cuts. The company will report first-quarter earnings Tuesday.

The company had 309,500 employees at the end of last year. When it announced the acquisition of BellSouth Corp. in 2006, it said it would cut 10,000 jobs over three years from the combined company to eliminate overlap. The cuts announced Friday are not part of that reduction and are the largest announcement of job cuts by the company since then.

Despite the layoffs associated with the BellSouth acquisition, the combined workforce grew by 7,000 last year as the company built up its growing wireless and TV divisions even as telephone land lines shrank in the face of competition from wireless and cable phone service.