HP skims another 10% off some EDS workers' pay packets
No joke as US, Puerto Rico staff have April pay cut
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Hewlett-Packard has confirmed its EDS employees in the US and Puerto Rico will have their base salaries cut an additional ten per cent for April 2009 only.
The company told its staff late on Friday that some workers would temporarily suffer a second drop in pay to help HP execs steer the services outfit through tough economic conditions.
“EDS, an HP company, announced plans to take an additional, temporary cost action to keep the organisation strong while increasing financial flexibility,” said HP in a statement.
Base salaries for all US and Puerto Rico-based EDS staff whose annual full-time pay packet is over $40,000, will be slashed another ten per cent on top of reductions made just last month across the vendor’s 300,000-strong global workforce.
“In May, base salaries for US and Puerto Rico employees in the EDS business unit will be reinstated at the levels of base pay prior to this temporary base salary reduction,” said HP.
In February HP's CEO Mark Hurd delivered the sobering news to his staff that he was imposing wide-ranging pay cuts in an effort to prevent further job losses at the firm, which bought EDS for $13.9bn last spring.
Hurd said he was taking a 20 per cent base salary cut, while other execs would see their pay fall by 10 to 15 per cent. Other workers in the US were told their salary would be between 2.5 and five per cent lighter.
Meanwhile, HP has been undergoing the tricky task of convincing its workers in the UK and Europe to voluntarily take a pay cut.
Unlike their US cousins who saw an immediate dent in salary following the company's latest cost-cutting announcement on 18 February, HP's EMEA employees are required by law to give their individual written consent before any salary deduction can be imposed upon them.
All of which might explain why the firm's US employees have taken yet another hit.
Unite HP and EDS national officer Peter Skyte slammed the tech giant's latest cost-cutting strategy.
"We have to assume that this temporary pay cut lasting for a month represents yet another piece of crude and naked financial engineering by HP in advance of the company's 2009 second quarter results to be announced in May. From contacts we have in the US, we know that it has been greeted with incredulity and anger," he told The Register.
He also called on the "Obama administration to act to protect US employees from trigger happy management actions more akin to the Wild West in the 19th century than those of a blue chip technology company with a highly skilled workforce in the 21st century." ®
COMMENTS
As far as i care they can fuck off
only reason im hanging in is my family.. im sick off this and going ASAP.
Veiled threats from managment
The problem we have certainly where I am in the UK is that management are verbally insinuating that come the next round of CR's it will be those who dont take the pay cut who will be top of the list to go. They have a point system to get rid of you and its being 'fixed' all the time to ensure that it looks like they have drawn up the CR list fairly - just in case you go to tribunal. But its all rubbish. My manager told me in the last round that they already knew who was going before the scoring was done. Lets not forget that a lot of EDS employees in the UK are not in London or places with IT jobs - they are historically in low pay areas with high unemployment. There are a lot of frightened employees who are worried looking after their families and keeping a roof over their head. We need the unions to be more vocal , we also need MP's to get involved - lets not forget - our biggest accounts here are government and we are having trouble enough in these as it is. We need to be recruiting on these accounts not getting rid of people.
HP/EDS pay-cuts are only happining in the US
I am an american working for HP/EDS in Germany. The cuts in wages are only stateside. Internationally they are volentary, and for the HP/EDS German labor force his intentions are a joke. People are laughing at Hurd here about trying to “force” the pay cuts here. They are anchored in our contracts here and can not be altered if Mark is having a bad quarter. On the otherside he is consolidating alot of HP/EDS functions causing alot of strikes and unrest here in the european labor force. HP/EDS have just lost 3 big banking instatutions because of Hurds actions, especially outsourcing to former communist countries and India. The financial instatutions are not happy trying to understand the bad english or incompetence associated with the offshore decisions the company has pushed.
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