News

According to members of the UNI Europa/IndustriALL-Europe HP European Alliance, HP is eliminating another 7000 jobs in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) in addition to the 8000 redundancies already announced. All told these cuts are part of CEO Meg Whitman’s decision to cut more than 29,000 jobs. Most of these new lay-offs, according to the source, will come from ‘old’ EU countries.

The majority of these jobs are in the Enterprise Services (ES) division, which is primarily the former EDS, a company HP bought in 2008.

A spokesperson for the HP European Alliance wondered ‘why HP ever bought EDS, just for firing people?’

According to the company fewer jobs are a result of less revenue.

HP Alliance members are concerned that HP is not being open about job reductions, is refusing to provide national figures and that ‘consultation’ with the EWC is just a formality as decisions have already been made by HP management.

Alan Tate, Head of UNI ICTS said ‘It looks very much like HP is outsourcing many of these jobs to Central and Eastern Europe and Asia in an effort to become a low cost provider with no interest in developing high valued added services in the EU’.

Alliance sources claimed the company was refusing to debate the business logic behind the decision and that employees had become disposable rather than a valued asset. Thence spokesperson called the company’s behaviour ‘disgraceful’.

Ian Tonks, IT and Communications National Officer at UNITE the Union in the UK told on line publication The Register that since he took on the role last January all he had heard was ‘redundancies after redundancies. IT is supposed to be a growth area. If I were leaving school today would I be interested in making IT my future? That is very doubtful,’ said Tonks.