VERIZON TO CUT EQUIVALENT OF 10,000 JOBS.

Byline: Staff and wire reports

Verizon Communications expects to cut the equivalent of 10,000 jobs this year, mostly by not filling vacancies and cutting overtime and the use of contractors. But some layoffs are possible at the nation's largest local phone company.

The reduction in Verizon's core telephone operations is part of an ongoing effort to eliminate positions duplicated by last year's purchase of GTE and meet the cost-savings goals made possible by that merger, a spokesman said Wednesday.

``We expect to cut a great deal of the positions through retirements and normal attrition. When you've got 260,000 people, you have people come and go,'' spokesman Eric Rabe said Wednesday at Verizon's annual meeting with analysts in New York.

About 6,000 of the 10,000 job cuts are expected to come from attrition. The remainder would be achieved by cutting 4,000 ``full-time equivalents,'' meaning that overtime and contractor hires would be reduced by that number of 40-hour work weeks.

``We have laid out the possibility where there may be some layoffs, but there's no plan for any widespread layoffs,'' Rabe said. ``A lot of businesses have announced significant work force reductions, and that is not what is going on here. This is part of the normal business as we merge these two companies.''

``When it comes to California - like the rest of the company, we're allowing our (individual) units to determine how to handle that,'' said Julia Wilson, a spokeswoman for Verizon's office in Thousand Oaks, one of the company's largest bases.

Also Wednesday, Verizon announced plans to provide global communications services for big business customers by assembling a network linking the United States with major cities in Europe, Asia and Latin America.