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Dell to close Ireland facility, hand out 1,900 pink slips

Posted Jan 8th 2009 10:27AM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Bad news, Dell (DELL), Employees

While Lenovo is facing cutbacks and sluggish sales, the company right ahead of it in global PC sales -- Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) -- is going through some of the same motions. Not only has CEO Michael Dell changed the top management last week, it will continue shedding jobs. As of this morning, the PC maker announced that it would lay off 1,900 workers in Ireland at its main plant there and shift production to Poland instead.

So, U.S. workers are not the only ones feeling the unemployment pinch. In addition to moving all production work to Poland for the EMEA region, Dell will also move parts of the previous Irish production to third-party manufacturers -- something that outgoing operations chief Mike Cannon was an expert at.

Dell's about-to-be former Limerick, Ireland facility was opened in 1990 and employed 4,500 people at its peak. With swings in the global economy and the PC market, though, it's now going away. Dell's status as Ireland's largest single exporter may be at stake after the Limerick facility is closed, but that's not entirely clear yet. The PC maker will continue to operate its sales and marketing division in Dublin as well as keeping open its Global Innovation Solutions Center in Limerick.

Dell announces call center layoffs in US and Canada

Posted Feb 1st 2008 11:20AM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Bad news, Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Canada

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) announced yesterday that the company will finally bring last year's layoff announcement to its customer service operations in a few contact centers. Over 900 employees in its Canadian Ottawa operations will be let go, along with approximately 300 in Dell's Oklahoma City customer contact center as well. In the case of the Oklahoma call center, consumer sales and consumer technical support are being hit hard, but the center will also take on more business technical support responsibilities.

Today is the last day of Dell's fiscal year, and it's a time when the company wants to take charges on its books instead of carrying them over to the new fiscal year, so the timing of these layoffs makes sense financially. However, the company was trumpeting growing both contact centers just over a year ago -- and now headcount reductions are happening. My, how a year can change things drastically, yes?

The company still has a long way to go in order to catch market leader Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which passed it last year as the world's largest computer maker. Dell responded by bringing in a bunch of new blood and by entering the retail market as quickly as possible. Perhaps when it bolsters sales back up, it may need to support those new customers with customer service employee re-hirings. Until then, it's just another zany day in the tech worker layoff arena.

Job cuts coming to Dell soon?

Posted Mar 12th 2007 10:36AM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rumors, Dell (DELL), Employees

Questions have been centering on the fate of Dell Inc.'s (NASDAQ:DELL) employee base in recent weeks, especially as the tales of the computer maker's recent struggles came into public view. It's true that Dell recognizes where it needs to improve, starting at the top with return of company founder Michael Dell and a slew of new executives to right the ship back to its former glory, if that is even possible.

But, with the rate of Dell employee growth having far outpaced sales growth in recent years, is the company ready for a reduction in its workforce? Maybe so -- as it's been over six years since a company wide layoff was in effect at Dell. By many measurements -- like operating expenses being 11.6% of sales recently -- Dell's employee ranks are overpopulated.

Is the PC maker ready to cut some employees? Like this BusinessWeek article mentions, the most likely departments to be cut would include marketing and accounting. Positions at sales and customer support are probably safer as the company definitely needs to keep selling and continue improving its level of support to customers, an area which has been a troublesome for quite some time.

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Last updated: November 25, 2009: 05:17 PM

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