Fujitsu Ltd. will announce Monday restructuring plans that include the laying off of around 15,000 workers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Sunday morning edition.
The job cuts, which represent around 10 per cent of the electronics maker’s global workforce, will mostly come in North America and Asia, said the newspaper. Around 3,000 jobs are to be cut in Japan as a result of the plan, which will see the company consolidate production of computers and telecommunication equipment, it said.
The company will announce an end to overseas manufacturing of semiconductors and data storage units for personal computers and switch U.S. production of telecommunication switches to fiber optic products, according to the newspaper. The company will also announce plans to combine domestic semiconductor production lines, it said.
Several thousand production line workers will also be transferred to software and services divisions, said the newspaper. These divisions provided most of the few bright spots in Fujitsu’s first quarter earnings, announced in late July.
Some elements of the restructuring have already been announced. Earlier this month the company announced plans to end 3.5-inch IDE hard disk manufacturing in favor of more profitable 2.5-inch drives.
Fujitsu officials expect to report a net loss for the current year of 220 billion yen, against a net profit of 8.5 billion yen last year. Net sales are expected to slip from last year’s 5.5 trillion yen to 5.4 trillion yen this year.
Fujitsu could not immediately be reached for comment.
Fujitsu has Canadian offices in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and can be contacted at
http://www.fujitsu.ca
.