The world's second-biggest computer maker said it would cut 1,500 jobs in Germany and 968 jobs in Britain as it streamlines its global workforce to save $1.9 billion a year.
In Germany, Europe's biggest economy, HP will lose a sixth of its staff by the end of next year, adding to anxieties about record unemployment there ahead of a general election on Sunday which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is expected to lose.
A spokesman for HP Germany said all the company's main divisions would be affected, and that negotiations had begun with trade unions.
In Britain, the jobs will be cut over the next 12 months. A spokesman said production there would be little affected, with the job cuts mainly in human resources, IT and finance.
He would not give a figure for compulsory redundancies, saying it was too early in the process.
HP's five British sites -- Bracknell, Bristol, Glasgow, Reading and Warrington -- will all see job cuts but Glasgow will not be heavily affected because it is a production centre. "It is all about streamlining the company," the UK spokesman said.
In France, Workers' unions called a one-day national strike to protest planned job cuts...
The walkout is scheduled for Friday at the company's sites across France, with a march scheduled near its main offices.
1,240 of a total 4,800 jobs will be cut in France. France's employment minister, Gerard Larcher, will meet with company executives on Friday.
The job cuts, announced by new Chief Executive Mark Hurd in July, are the deepest since ousted CEO Carly Fiorina cut around the same number of staff in May 2002 after HP bought rival Compaq Computer.
On Aug. 16, HP posted quarterly results that topped Wall Street forecasts as its personal and business computer units showed strong improvement.
But analysts still want HP to cut more jobs, to spin off its lucrative imaging and printing group or to divest its personal computing business, where costs are still higher than those of Dell, its bigger rival.
HP's shares, which have outperformed the DJ Industrial Average by 44 percent over the past 12 months, were trading 0.8 percent lower at $27.52
Last Friday, union officials said Hewlett-Packard was axing 6,000 jobs in Europe, with more than half the cuts in France, Germany and Britain.
Friday's news emerged as European finance ministers met in Manchester, where Britain's Gordon Brown urged action to make Europe a "high growth, low unemployment" area instead of a continent plagued by low growth and high unemployment.
Free trade with slave labor countries means that developed country wages will have to level with those. I am a semi retired mechical engineer. I am offered less money now than I as getting in 1991... the USD has declined over 70% in that time frame.
RépondreSupprimerAs the third world, India and China have vastly more people than the EU and the US...and India has its world class India Tech engineering school. Increasingly these have no problem in beating us both in engineering and production of high end equipment.
Not today in all cases of course...but soon in enough situations that the US and EU will loose its bread and butter markets.
We can do the moon rockets...wonderful. There is no profit in that however.
This entire mess will go sompletely south as lost jobs translate to declinng US and EU economies..
There will never be an equitable balance of trade as our idiots in power claim.
There is no reason India and China will ever buy sufficiently from the US or the EU what it can produce itself at a fifth or a tenth the cost.
the cures:
Wage compensation needs to be tied to the cost of living in any particular country.
To make that possible low cost producers must be tarrifed at the borders of countries with a higher standard of living unless one wishes those tax bases and bloated governments to collapse.
There is no significant tax revenue in imported goods, no income tax revenue... the profits and US capitol goes to the manufacturing country.
These, because we are hyperinflating our currencies in the US and the EU, must spend the money buying up our infrastructes or be left holding bags full of bogus currency.
Underling the disaster are completely bloated US and EU burocracies... in the US add particualarly completely corrupt bureaucracies..
these produce *nothing, beyond minimalist levels these are a cancer on any culture and seen historically as the cause of all cultural decline.
THese cost a fortune..and by their high revenue requirements, high taxes, have made EU and US labor non competitive on world markets.
Did you know that in California for instance a 30 year veteran of the highway patrol (regular officer not a division head) most often retires at well over $100,000 dollars a year... prison guards in the same range.. more than some PhD's earn while working. Some of these copa and even janitorial staff are retiring at over 150,000 dollars a year. (the US average retirement is 11,000 dollars a year..
the working class in the US retires under 800 dollars a month... by comparison a parking ticket in San Franscisco is 85 dollars, lunch 10 dollars or so.
It is THIS bloat and utter waste that has made developed country labor non competitive in world markets.
Our bureaucracies have eaten us alive as we in the US at least bleed ourselves into irrecoverable debt bombing Iraqi cab drivers and camel jockies to oblivion.
Until that bloat and waste is addressed, which it will not be untill it is way too late, it will be china and india rising as the US and EU decline.
Phil Scott
(415)505 5107
Thanx phill for your comments,
RépondreSupprimer- 160 local people and 190 EMEA
RépondreSupprimer