THOUSANDS OF WORKERS at Hewlett Packard’s Irish operations are waiting to hear to what extent massive restructuring proposals will impact their jobs.
Last night, the global corporation announced 27,000 job cuts as part of a $3.5 billion savings plan.
HP Ireland told TheJournal.ie that “unfortunately there is no additional information to share at the moment” as no specific plans with regards to specific locations have been revealed. However, a spokesperson said that the company expects the workforce reduction to impact “just about every business and region” over the next year-and-a-half.
About 4,000 staff are employed at HP’s Leixlip plant in Kildare and the Ballybrit facility in Galway city.
The cuts announced yesterday evening represent HP’s largest in its 73-year history. The reductions will affect about 8 per cent of the nearly 350,000 employees by the time the restructuring is completed in October 2014.
It is hoped that early retirement packages will help avoid a large number of actual lay-offs.
HP CEO Meg Whitman said that the company plans to funnel most of the savings into developing more products and services that could help HP adapt to tech shifts that are driving demand for more mobile computing and software that is provided over high-speed Internet connections.
“While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company,”Whitman said in a statement.
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