Expats fear for jobs after Hewlett Packard cuts

19 July 2005

PORTLAND, UNITED STATES — Hewlett-Packard is to lay off about one in ten of its workers as part of its long-awaited restructuring.

The US computer and IT giant said it planned to cut 14,500 jobs over the next 18 months in an attempt to save USD1.9bn (EUR1.58bn) a year, the BBC reported.

HP has 2,300 workers in Spain, many of whom are expats. One of its biggest plants is at Barcelona.

The announcement is the first major strategic move by its new boss, Mark Hurd.

Hurd was brought in to replace Carly Fiorina after she quit in April, following a dispute with the board.

The layoffs are the biggest to hit HP’s workforce since Fiorina engineered a USD19bn (EUR 15.83bn) takeover of Compaq in 2002, a move she accompanied by widespread job cuts.

In May, some 2,000 staff in the firm’s core printing business accepted voluntary redundancy packages.

HP said it expected most of the jobs to be lost within support areas such as IT, finance and personnel.

But it also said that it intended to integrate sales and marketing more tightly into its business units, dissolving the group responsible for selling to smaller businesses and the public sector. Neither sales nor research and development are to suffer significant cuts.

The plan was “designed to simplify its structure, reduce costs and place greater focus on customers”, HP said in a statement.

Shortly after his appointment, Hurd called for HP to tighten up its performance, saying that its 7 percent rise in sales during the three months to April left “room for improvement”.

HP has promised that it will offer voluntary retirement to long-serving staff based in the US.

Outside the US, HP said it would offer redundancy packages in line with local laws and – where appropriate – in consultation with works councils and employee representatives.

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Subject: Spanish news