Bell Atlantic offers early retirement incentives to trim management ranks

Bell Atlantic Corp., the Philadelphia-based parent of Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Maryland, announced a plan yesterday to reduce its management ranks by more than 3,500 through an early retirement incentive program.

Bell Atlantic has 68,000 employees, including about 10,300 in Maryland. About 18,000 of its workers are salaried employees in management positions.

"The area where we feel that we are overstaffed is in the management ranks," Cynthia M. Ciangio, a Bell Atlantic spokeswoman, said.

About 17 percent of the company's employees in Maryland hold management positions. Bell Atlantic estimates that 6,300 of its workers will qualify for the new retirement program. The company, however, plans to limit initial participation to 3,500 workers, based on seniority.

After the initial phase of the program, there will be other benefits toencourage additional early retirements as the company is able to handle the reductions, Ms. Ciangio explained. She said that the company was not able to estimate how much money the program would savebecause it was too early to say how many workers would accept it.

Bell Atlantic said that some of the proceeds of its $75 million public stock offering of Telecom Corp. of New Zealand earlier this year will be used to finance the labor force reduction program.