Verizon is planning to cut about 15,000 jobs in the telecommunications company’s largest-ever layoffs as part of a restructuring under its new CEO.
Reuters reported the looming layoffs on Thursday, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
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The job cuts will impact 15 percent of the US-based company’s workforce, and are set to take place as soon as next week, the person said.
A Verizon spokesperson declined to comment.
The cuts, following the appointment of former PayPal boss Dan Schulman as CEO in early October, are aimed at the company’s non-union management ranks and are expected to affect more than 20 percent of that workforce, one source said. Verizon also plans to transition around 180 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations, the source added.
The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts earlier.
Verizon is battling rising competition as subscriber growth slows and cautious consumers are unwilling to buy premium wireless plans. It has faced mounting pressure from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile as the wireless market in the United States matures.
Schulman said last month that Verizon understood it needs aggressive change, including “cost transformation, fundamentally restructuring our expense base”.
“We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” he added.
Schulman, a Verizon board member for seven years, has said he does not want to hike prices and seeks to be more customer-focused.
“Our financial growth has relied too heavily on price increases; a strategic approach that relies too much on price without subscriber growth is not a sustainable strategy,” he said last month.
Verizon had about 100,000 US employees at the end of 2024, after cutting almost 20,000 over three years. Last year, it announced a reduction of 4,800 employees through a voluntary programme and took a nearly $2bn charge. In 2018, Verizon said about 10,400 employees would leave under a prior voluntary exit programme.
Stop subscriber exits
Verizon maintains the highest price points in its telecommunications sector, a strategy that analysts have said is difficult to sustain amid rising competitive intensity.
Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, said the new CEO’s first commitment was to stop the bleeding from subscriber churn, which would require subsidising expensive handsets for a huge number of Verizon’s subscribers to keep them from leaving.
“The obvious question was how Verizon planned to pay for that. Now we know,” Moffett said. “What we don’t know is whether these cost reductions will actually help to offset the higher planned costs of retention” of customers.
In recent years, Verizon spent $52bn to acquire key wireless C-band spectrum in a 2021 auction and struck a $20bn deal to acquire Frontier Communications last year. It also spent $6bn to acquire prepaid mobile phone provider TracFone Wireless.
Lawyers for James Comey and Letitia James have asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal cases filed against them, claiming the administration of President Donald Trump illegally installed the prosecutor who brought the charges.
On Thursday, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie heard their petition in Alexandria, Virginia, as the two defendants seek to have their cases tossed before they reach trial.
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Both Comey and James are considered prominent critics of President Trump, and they have argued that the charges against them are a form of political retribution.
Thursday’s petition concerned the role of US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in the two indictments.
Halligan, an insurance lawyer who was formerly part of Trump’s personal legal team, was appointed to the role of US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on an interim basis.
US attorneys are the top federal prosecutors in their districts, and to be appointed on a permanent basis, nominees must first be confirmed by the Senate.
Halligan, however, arrived at her role under unusual circumstances. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, had been forced out in September amid pressure from President Trump.
Interim US attorneys may only serve a period of 120 days, after which point federal judges decide who can stay in the role. Siebert had gotten that approval. Halligan had not. It was instead the Department of Justice that named Halligan to the position of interim US attorney.
Lawyers for Comey and James have therefore maintained that Halligan’s appointment as US attorney was invalid.
“The only thing that matters is whether Ms Halligan had a proper appointment when she stood before the grand jury, and she did not,” Ephraim McDowell, one of Comey’s lawyers, said on Thursday.
The Justice Department, however, has argued that the law does not prevent the appointments of successive interim US attorneys, nor does any ambiguity on the matter render Halligan’s indictments invalid.
Justice Department lawyer Henry Whitaker called the concerns, at best, a “paperwork error” — and not a reason to throw out the charges.
Former FBI Director James Comey’s lawyer Abbe Lowell talks to reporters as he leaves the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on November 13 [Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo]
Halligan’s appointment in September corresponded with a series of indictments against Trump rivals and critics, including James — a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — and James, the attorney general of New York state.
Comey was indicted on September 25 for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The case against him focuses on whether he lied to senators during his 2020 testimony about the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian election interference in 2016.
Comey has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has likewise denied any wrongdoing in her case. On October 9, she was indicted on one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution, both of which carry a maximum of 30 years in prison.
A third Trump critic, former national security adviser, John Bolton, was also indicted on October 16 on charges related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents. He, too, has pleaded not guilty.
Bolton was not part of Thursday’s court hearing.
Lawyers for Bolton, Comey and James have separately argued that the prosecutions are improperly vindictive and motivated by the president’s personal vendettas towards their clients.
Trump had openly called for the Comey and James indictments in September, addressing a Truth Social post to Attorney General Pam Bondi that blasted the Justice Department for “all talk, no action”.
“What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” he wrote on September 20.
He also denounced Siebert for failing to bring cases against James and Comey, while praising Halligan.
“There is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so,” Trump wrote. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Currie did not immediately rule from the bench but said she expects to decide by Thanksgiving.
Currie did, however, express scepticism about the Justice Department’s case.
She told the court that she had not been provided with a full transcript of the grand jury proceeding that led to Comey’s indictment.
The judge also noted that for part of the day of the Comey indictment — from 4:28pm local time until the moment when the indictment was returned — there was “no court reporter present” to take notes on the proceedings.
That leaves a gap in the documentation of the grand jury’s activities, Currie explained.
She indicated that it also creates a dilemma with one of the Justice Department’s arguments: that Attorney General Bondi had ratified the Comey indictment, along with Halligan.
“It’s become obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed” the missing portion of the transcript, Currie said.
In a separate complaint (PDF) earlier this week, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability also asked state bar authorities in Florida and Virginia to investigate Halligan over alleged violations of professional conduct.
“Ms. Halligan’s actions appear to constitute an abuse of power and serve to undermine the integrity of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and erode public confidence in the legal profession and the fair administration of justice,” the group stated in its complaint.
Campaign for Accountability pointed out that, while Siebert refused to indict Comey and James, Halligan proceeded to do so despite scant evidence.
It also pointed out irregularities in how she procured the indictments from the grand juries involved.
“In violation of customary practice, no career prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office participated, and only 14 of the 23 grand jurors who heard the presentation voted to indict Mr. Comey,” the complaint reads.
It accuses Halligan of appearing to have “made false statements of material fact to both the grand jury and the district court” in both Comey’s and James’s cases.
Officials in Colombia say the country will continue to share intelligence with international agencies combatting drug trafficking, just days after President Gustavo Petro said he was suspending such collaboration with the United States over attacks on vessels in international waters.
Colombian Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sanchez said in a social media post on Thursday that Petro had provided “clear instructions” to maintain a “continuous flow of information” with international agencies working on drug trafficking.
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“Against transnational crime, the answer is international cooperation,” Sanchez wrote on X.
The country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti, also said in a separate statement that there had been “a misunderstanding” and Petro never said that US security agencies would stop working in Colombia alongside their Colombian counterparts.
“We will continue working as this Government has done against drug trafficking and crime with the United States,” Benedetti said on social media.
The apparent about-face comes after Petro — a left-wing leader and vocal critic of US President Donald Trump — said on Tuesday that an order had been issued “to suspend communications and other dealings with US security agencies”.
Petro has been critical of a series of deadly US attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration accused of smuggling illegal drugs.
The strikes have prompted widespread condemnation, with United Nations officials and other experts saying they amount to clear violations of international law.
“These attacks — and their mounting human cost — are unacceptable,” Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, said in late October.
“The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”
The Trump administration has rejected the criticism, saying its attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific aim to deter drug traffickers. The US bombing campaign, which began in September, has killed at least 76 people to date.
Trump, without providing any evidence, also has accused Petro of being involved in drug trafficking, imposing sanctions on the Colombian president and his family last month.
The Colombian leader has, in turn, called for Trump to be investigated for war crimes linked to the attacks, which have affected citizens from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.
Petro also has accused Washington of going after peasants growing coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, instead of targeting major drug traffickers and money launderers.
On Sunday, Petro said that he met with the family of a Colombian fisherman who was allegedly killed in one of the US strikes.
“He may have been carrying fish, or he may have been carrying cocaine, but he had not been sentenced to death,” Petro said during a summit between Latin American and European leaders hosted by Colombia. “There was no need to murder him.”
US news outlet CNN reported earlier this week that the United Kingdom had suspended some intelligence-sharing with the US over its strikes on the boats in the Caribbean.
More than a thousand unionised Starbucks baristas have walked off the job in more than 40 cities across the United States as negotiations have stalled between the company and the union, Starbucks Workers United.
Workers at 65 stores began an open-ended strike on Thursday, coinciding with the Seattle, Washington-based coffee shop chain’s Red Cup Day sales event, when customers who order a holiday-themed beverage can receive a free reusable cup with their purchase.
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The event typically drives higher traffic to Starbucks stores.
The coffeeshop chain, which has more than 18,000 stores across the US and Canada, says that the walkouts have caused limited impact.
More stores could soon join the strike. Starbucks Workers United represents roughly 550 stores around the US. Combined, this strike could be the largest in the history of the coffeeshop chain.
Stores in cities including Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Austin and Portland will join the work stoppage, it said. Some locations had already shut down for the day, a union spokesperson told journalists on a media call.
In an Instagram post on Thursday, the union called on consumers not to shop at any Starbucks location “today and beyond” ahead of a nationwide rally slated to begin at 4pm local time for each location.
The union has filed more than 1,000 charges to the National Labor Relations Board for alleged unfair labour practices such as firing unionising baristas, and last week, it voted to authorise a strike if a contract was not finalised by November 13.
Starbucks has said it pays an average wage of $19 an hour and offers employees who work at least 20 hours a week benefits including healthcare, parental leave and tuition for online classes at Arizona State University.
The union said starting wages are $15.25 per hour in about 33 states and the average barista gets less than 20 hours per week.
Talks between the union and the company stretched for about eight months in 2024, but broke down in December, after which workers went on strike during the key holiday period.
“Unfortunately, it’s not unusual to see stall tactics used in collective bargaining, as we’re seeing with Starbucks. But the situation and the strike vote also demonstrate that long-term grassroots organising empowers workers. There’s strength in numbers,” Jennifer Abruzzo, former General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board under former US President Joe Biden, said in remarks shared with Al Jazeera.
History of strikes
Starbucks workers have gone on strike several times over the last few years, starting in 2021. Workers at a location in Buffalo, New York became the first unionised store and subsequently launched a nationwide movement, which now represents four percent of the Starbucks cafe workforce, or about 9,500 people.
In 2022, workers at roughly 100 stores went on strike, and in December 2024, workers walked off the job amid stalled negotiations at 300 stores. Negotiations began again earlier this year, but the two parties have yet to come to an agreement.
In April this year, the union voted to reject a Starbucks proposal that guaranteed annual raises of at least two percent, saying it did not offer changes to economic benefits such as healthcare, or an immediate pay hike.
Protesters picket outside a Starbucks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the US [Matt Slocum/AP Photo]
“Despite the fact that thousands of Starbucks baristas voted to engage in collective bargaining some years ago, the company has manipulated the situation to avoid having a contract,” Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.
“Baristas are staying strong. The strength of the strike vote shows that baristas aren’t giving up. They continue to demand fair treatment by the company.”
Executive pressures
The strike comes as Starbucks under CEO Brian Niccol shuts hundreds of underperforming stores this year, including the unionised flagship Seattle location, while trimming corporate roles to control costs.
Niccol, who previously spent six years leading Chipotle, has stressed improving service times and in-store experience in the US to revive demand for beverages as sales have remained flat or negative for the past seven quarters.
Niccol had said in September last year when he took over as CEO that he was committed to dialogue.
However, Lynne Fox, the union’s international president, said on a call with journalists that things changed once Niccol took the helm.
“A year into Niccol’s tenure, negotiations have gone backwards after months of steady progress and good faith negotiations last year,” Fox said.
In 2024, Niccol’s compensation package totaled more than $95m, which is 6,666 times the median employee salary, according to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch tracker. That represents the largest CEO-to-worker pay gap among the S&P 500, according to the Institute for Policy Studies’ Executive Excess report.
Niccol’s pay, however, is largely driven by the performance of Starbucks’ stock, with $90m coming from the value of stock awards. Since Niccol took over the company in September 2024, the stock price of Starbucks has fallen by about 6 percent.
Africa is experiencing its worst outbreak of cholera in the past 25 years, with Angola and Burundi seeing renewed surges that suggest active transmission of the disease, according to African medical officials.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a public health agency for the African Union, said it had recorded about 300,000 confirmed and suspected cases of cholera so far in 2025. In addition, it had logged more than 7,000 deaths.
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The figures show an increase of more than 30 percent over the total number of cases recorded last year, which was 254,075.
“Cholera is still a major issue,” Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya said in a news briefing on Thursday. “It’s like every year we have more and more cases.”
Kaseya told reporters that two countries in particular have shown increases, suggesting active transmission of the infection: Angola and Burundi.
Angola has seen at least 33,563 total cases of cholera so far in 2025, resulting in 866 deaths, and Burundi has experienced at least 2,380 cases, leading to 10 deaths.
Cholera is a bacterial disease usually spread when people drink contaminated water or have contact with the water through open wounds. In some cases, it is possible to become infected when eating raw shellfish.
It cannot be transmitted from person to person, so casual contact with a person who has the disease is not a risk.
The disease causes severe diarrhoea and dehydration. If the disease is left untreated, cholera can kill within hours — even among people who were previously healthy.
The Africa CDC blamed the rise of the disease on poor access to safe water and conflicts across the continent.
“As we know, without water, we cannot really control the outbreak,” Kaseya said Thursday.
Even in countries that have seen slight declines in cholera cases, Kaseya encouraged health officials to address the root causes, including overcrowding and poor sanitation in refugee camps.
“Insecurity, displacement of our populations — all of that are not helping, in addition to a lack of wash commodities,” he said.
As of August, at least 40 people had died from cholera in Sudan’s Darfur region, with local refugee camps hit particularly hard.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, described the situation as the country’s worst outbreak in years.
The war in Sudan has damaged and destroyed much of the country’s civilian infrastructure, including sewage and water treatment works, and turned many places, including the capital Khartoum, into battlefields.
“On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years,” MSF said in a statement in August, cited by the AFP news agency.
“In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week.”
In total, Sudan has experienced at least 71,728 cases of cholera in 2025, resulting in 2,012 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.
