Fujitsu cuts 1,200 UK jobs after revenue mauling
Even though EMEA sales grew 38% in Q1...
Posted in Management, 26th August 2009 13:04 GMT
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Fujitsu Services is shedding roughly 10 per cent of its UK workforce with the announcement that 1,200 jobs will go, following less than pretty revenues.
In June the Japanese tech firm reported an 11 per cent drop in first quarter revenue, down to ¥1.04tn (£6.7bn). It pulled in a net loss of ¥29bn (£186m) during Q1.
However, despite the firm's overall EMEA sales growing a healthy 38 per cent to ¥238bn (£1.5bn) during the quarter, Fujitsu Services is letting the axe fall on its staff in Blighty, where it currently employs 12,500 people.
"Fujitsu has proposed this measure reluctantly," said the IT services outfit in a statement.
"However action is necessary to ensure that the company remains competitive in the current difficult global economic climate and is in a solid position for future growth when the economy starts to recover."
The company said that "prudent measures" to keep costs down at its UK operations hadn't been enough to prevent job cuts at Fujitsu, which are expected to conclude at the end of 2009.
Employees were told in an internal memo, penned by the firm's UK and Ireland CEO Roger Gilbert and seen by The Register, that Fujitsu UK currently has "excess capability in a number of areas of the business".
"We will be entering into a consultation process with a number of very specific areas of the business where the Company proposes to reduce headcount," he said.
"This activity will be focused only on these specific areas and if you work in one of these you will receive more details about how you may be affected within the next 48 hours." ®
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COMMENTS
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Deja vu
This is not the first batch of redundancies for this year by any means. Not that you would have known it from this article, posted on the 27th March 2009 and titled "Fujitsu staff clash with bosses over pay freeze" :
"We asked the Fujitsu spokesman if jobs could be under threat at the company."
Spokesman's response: 'We have no intention of doing that, but equally we can't say there won't be job cuts in the future,"
Except the spokesman in question must have or at least should have known this was completely untrue because Fujitsu were already in the process of closing down their site at Foots Cray and had called all the employees there to a briefing on the 4th March to be told the bad news. Plus there had been a jobs fair held on the 19th and 20th March with Jobcentre Plus amongst others in attendance.
Atlhough some people did manage to get alternative jobs within Fujitsu a fair number still ended up getting made redundant.
Repeating again
Just after 2001, when ICL died, we were offered voluntary redundancies before forced...three times as many people asked to be made redundant, knowing that Fuji would be a bad employer...also 3 pay reviews were skipped and the next award held off for 6 months...I went to SERCO, not a brilliant employer (no benefits in the package) but at least more honest. Looks like history on the repeat at Fujitsu tho
Reading between the lines...
The mail from Roger Gilbert says revenues are down 7%. No mention of profit or margins. Who wants to bet they aren't down by the same amount?
If you're at Fujitsu and aren't a UNITE or PCS member, I'd suggest you join.
Sad news
I'm glad I left last year - the sheer incompetence of the various management levels was funny at first but slowly got beyond a joke. And don't get me started on the pay, or RISE+ schemes
Good luck to all those still there - hope you land ok.
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