New(ish) CEO Michel Combes announced the cuts in advance of his meeting with his French employees' unions later today. That meeting will doubtless be the most uncomfortable of Combes' AlcaLu stint so far. In it, he will outline just how dire a situation Alcatel-Lucent finds itself in and why it has proved necessary to fire a full 14 per cent of the workforce - he will also probably point out, subtly, that he's actually minimised damage to the French workforce: only 900 of the 10,000 job cuts will be made in France.

The job cuts schedule is: 4,100 employees to go in Europe, Middle East and Africa; 3,800 in Asia Pacific, and 2,100 in the Americas.

According to Reuters, the company's unions are gearing up to fight the plans. Alcatel-Lucent has 72,000 employees and had already announced a plan to cut 5,000 jobs earlier this year: the new cuts are an addition.

Last week Combes laid out the upside of what is really a restructuring and realignment of the Alcatel-Lucent business with its 'Shift' plan - away from the legacy business lines it tends to rely too heavily on, and towards next generation IP equipment. In particular, Combes is excited about the growth potential of new technologies such as NFV (network function virtulisation) (see - Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes outlines The Shift Plan strategy to accelerate telecommunications to the cloud)

Last year Alcatel Lucent reported losses of €1.2 billion and has just suffered five straight quarters in the red.