French president Francois Hollande spoke out on Alcatel-Lucent’s proposed lay-offs, calling on the French vendor to minimise how the job cuts fall domestically, according to Reuters.

“In the framework of the decisions to be taken, the restructuring plan, it should be examined how the job cuts can be limited as much as possible,” said Hollande.

The French vendor has unveiled plans to cut 10,000 jobs of the company’s total workforce of 72,000 by the end of 2015, with 900 disappearing in France itself. The French job losses will incur in 2014.

The redundancies are one of the tactics that Alcatel-Lucent is deploying to rein in costs and return to a sound financial footing.

The axe will fall relatively lightly in France compared to elsewhere. The company is proposing to cut 14 per cent of its global workforce compared to ten per cent domestically.

And the company said, apart from the 900 job losses next year which will occur mainly in support, administration and sales, it would be recruiting 200 additional engineers and technicians.

However, by the end of 2015, the company could cut a further 900 jobs through internal transfers or outsourcing, a further blow to the French economy.

The job losses tap into a French concern about protecting high tech jobs in the country.

Hollande’s comments were echoed by the country’s industry minister Arnaud Montebourg: “We asked Alcatel-Lucent’s management to revise downward its job-cut plan, to reduce it because we cannot eternally pay the price of errors.”