Altice Layoffs Keep Coming — And Employees Are Running Out of Places to Hide

The way large corporations announce layoffs has a peculiar quality. The wording is consistently cautious, bordering on surgical: “a small percentage of employees,” “voluntary options,” “streamlining operations.” The majority of those phrases have been used by Altice USA at some point over the past few years, but none of that tactful language helps the workers who are affected.

There was no single dramatic moment that marked the start of the company’s workforce reductions. They came in waves, each associated with a distinct explanation. The first major layoffs were revealed in 2018 as a result of a contract dispute with the Dolan family over News 12; about 70 jobs were lost, and dozens more were promised. It was the pandemic of 2020. Another round of at least thirty jobs at News 12 in 2023. By 2024, Altice USA had advanced to a more comprehensive restructuring plan that included benefit reductions in addition to layoffs. Every chapter had a sense of interconnectedness, akin to a gradual deterioration rather than an abrupt collapse.

Reexamining the 2020 cuts is worthwhile because it sheds light on how these choices are made. Approximately 200 workers in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut alone were let go when Altice USA acknowledged that it had laid off a “small percentage” of its workforce during the pandemic. At the same time, the company introduced a “voluntary option” program at its Altice Technical Services division, which allowed field employees to choose between staying and receiving severance pay.

On paper, everything seemed plausible enough. However, it was also taking place at the same time that Altice USA was reporting strong growth in broadband subscribers, raising concerns about the extent to which the pandemic was compelling the company to act rather than offering convenient cover.

It’s difficult to ignore the pattern. Job losses in one area of the company, growth in another. Altice has not been an exception to the industry’s long-term decline in cable television subscriber numbers. Permitting problems caused the company’s fiber-to-the-premises expansion in the Optimum region—New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut—to slow down during the pandemic, resulting in lower capital expenditures. Jobs for field technicians and construction workers were directly impacted by that slowdown. Employees in a given area are typically the first to suffer when funding disappears.

The quarterly earnings reports never fully convey the human aspect of all of this. Reviews from both current and former Altice employees present a much more depressing picture than the press releases. Employees talk about receiving new job titles without warning.

After multiple rounds of cuts, people talk about doing the work of six or seven coworkers. That is a specific type of fatigue that is both psychological and physical. It’s not just stressful at the time when you see your team shrink quarter after quarter while your workload increases. Even on good days, it produces a persistent anxiety that is hard to get rid of.

Job loss, or even the fear of it, is among the most disorienting experiences in life, according to psychologists who study workplace trauma. Dr. Gregg Jantz, who has written a great deal about anxiety, has noted that people’s initial reaction is frequently a strong sense of betrayal when they believe their employer no longer values their contribution. When someone gets a new job, that betrayal doesn’t end. For years afterward, it alters their perspective on work. There may be a different burden for the workers who made it through Altice’s multiple rounds of layoffs: the uncertainty of not knowing when the next round will occur.

Of course, Altice is not the only cable company dealing with this kind of volatility. For more than ten years, the industry has struggled with cord-cutting, and this structural decline has compelled all of the major operators to reconsider their workforce.

According to some industry observers, Altice’s situation stands out due to its substantial debt load, which was brought on by founder Patrick Drahi’s aggressive acquisition strategy. This has put the company under additional financial strain that its rivals haven’t experienced in quite the same way. Managing a mountain of leverage makes cutting labor costs more alluring—or perhaps more essential.

Above all of this is the question of automation. According to reports from Altice’s investor presentations, the company has already started attributing workforce reductions to the use of AI tools; one estimate puts the replacement rate at about 5%. It is genuinely unclear if that number will increase significantly in the upcoming years. However, Altice is not the only company experiencing this trend. Millions of workers in American industry are being asked to consider the possibility that, in ten years, the role they have trained for and relied upon may not exist in the same form.

Career counselors typically offer the same practical advice to anyone working at Altice USA or anywhere else in the telecom industry: broaden your professional network, diversify your skill set, and don’t assume that institutional loyalty equates to job security. That is not cynicism. It’s an honest assessment of the current situation. Companies that have used restructuring to treat their employees well are the exception rather than the rule.

In the end, Altice USA’s story illustrates a confluence of issues that many American businesses are dealing with concurrently: a workforce that has endured years of instability without much transparency from the top, a declining traditional revenue base, growing debt, and technological disruption. Every time the phrase “small percentage” is used, it might be technically correct. However, when combined, those tiny percentages add up to something much bigger: thousands of workers, hundreds of families, and a business that appears committed to continuing to expand while employing fewer people to do so.