Unisys to cut 1,300 jobs

IDG News Service - Unisys Corp. today said it will be laying off around 1,300 workers worldwide as part of an "aggressive" effort to cut costs and return to profitability.

The head count reductions have already begun and will continue into 2009, Unisys said in a statement. All told, the Blue Bell, Pa.-based company expects to save about $225 million annually through cost-cutting measures, which include salary freezes, cuts in its contributions to employees' 401(k) retirement plans, and consolidation of facilities. Most employees will not get raises in 2009, the company said.

Unisys will take restructuring charge of $80 million to $85 million for the fourth quarter of 2008. During the third quarter of 2008, Unisys reported a net loss of $34.7 million; that's worse than the loss of $31 million that it reported in the same quarter a year earlier.

Layoff announcements are becoming commonplace in the technology industry. Outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said that IT industry job cuts could hit 180,000 by year's end. Already enterprise vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems have announced steep cuts. HP is slashing up to 25,000 jobs following its acquisition of IT services vendor Electronic Data Systems. Sun plans to lay of as many as 6,000 people.

There have been 140,000 technology industry job cuts so far this year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.