Japanese Fujitsu Group to Cut More Than 10,000 JobsJapanese Leading computer maker Fujitsu Ltd. plans to cut its group workforce by about 10%, or more than 10,000 jobs, at home and abroad as the core of its restructuring plan amid the information technology market setback, company officials said Sunday.The company will announce the plan Monday afternoon, the officials said, noting that it will also include withdrawal from unprofitable businesses and the closure and merger of domestic and overseas plants by the end of March 2004. Of some 180,000 jobs at home and abroad, more than 20,000 will be relocated or cut, they said. Job relocation and cuts will be mainly conducted in North America and Asia, where plants will be sold, and some 5,000 employees will be transferred or let go in Japan, including part-timers and workers on loan, they said. An early retirement system, which was introduced last month, will be utilized to that end, the officials said. According to the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Fujitsu plans to cut about 12,000 jobs mainly through layoffs in North America and Asia, while eliminating around 3,000 in Japan chiefly through the early retirement system. The officials said the company will study consolidation of semiconductor chips product lines, including those at its plants in Iwate and Fukushima prefectures, northeastern Japan. Fujitsu intends to scale down its hardware operations and concentrate on the software and services divisions with high growth potential to improve its profitability, they said. It will also focus on production of high value-added items with high profitability in its mainline operations such as microchips, computers and communications equipment, they said. Fujitsu chalked up a consolidated operating loss of 42.3 billion yen for the April-June quarter. It expects to post a group net loss of 220 billion yen for the full year ending March 31, 2002, due partly to huge restructuring costs. |
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