More big firms announce job cuts
Advertiser News Services
Layoffs continued across the country yesterday, with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Agere and JDS Uniphase all announcing layoff plans.
DaimlerChrysler: 26,000
A month after reporting a steep decline in first-quarter profits, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. said it plans to eliminate 1,500 jobs.
A number of major companies have announced job cuts in the past few months, including the following:
Motorola: 22,000
Nortel Networks: 20,000
Lucent Technologies: 16,000
Ericsson: 15,300
Delphi Automotive
Systems: 11,500
Verizon: 10,000
Procter & Gamble: 9,600
Cisco Systems: 8,500
Solectron: 8,200
JDS Uniphase: 8,000
Goodyear: 7,200
Wachovia (created from First Union-Wachovia deal): 7,000
Sara Lee: 7,000
Compaq: 7,000
Honeywell: 6,500
ADC Telecommunications: 6,000-7,000
Whirlpool: 6,000
J.C. Penney: 5,300
Intel: 5,000
3M: 5,000
Hewlett-Packard: 4,700
Supervalu: 4,500
Xerox: 4,300
The Walt Disney Co.: 4,000
Textron: 3,600
Schwab: 3,400
Kodak: 3,000-3,500
Gateway: 3,000
Texas Instruments: 2,500
ShopKo Stores: 2,500
AOL Time Warner: 2,400
Standard Register: 2,400
Sears: 2,400
Electrolux: 2,000
Winstar Communications: 2,000
Agere: 2,000
Visteon: 1,800
Service Merchandise: 1,750
PPG Industries: 1,500
Timken: 1,500
American Greetings: 1,500
Morgan Stanley: 1,500
Amazon.com: 1,300
3Com: 1,200
Freightliner: 1,085
Norfolk Southern: 1,000-2,000
Silicon Graphics: 1,000
Source: Individual companies
The cuts will come from Morgan Stanley's securities and investment management units through a combination of early retirements and layoffs.
Most of the cuts will be U.S. jobs, though some positions in Europe and Asia will be eliminated.
The move by the New York-based brokerage follows similar actions by several competitors, including UBS Warburg, Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bear Stearns Cos., Charles Schwab Corp. and Credit Suisse First Boston.
The firms' troubles were prompted by the steep stock market decline, which has cut brokerage fees, and sharply reduced revenue generated by arranging mergers and acquisition deals and helping companies issue new stock.
Morgan Stanley's earnings dropped 30 percent for the first quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, fiber optics equipment maker JDS Uniphase Corp. said it will eliminate 5,000 more jobs, bringing total cuts this year to about 28 percent of its work force, citing an international business slump and a loss of nearly $1.3 billion for its latest quarter.
The JDS cuts announced are the latest to rock the slumping technology sector and are in addition to the 3,000 reductions JDS announced in February. The company, a leading maker of products that use light to send information over glass fiber networks, has been hard hit as its customers — telecommunications and cable television companies — scale back plans to expand their systems.
JDS also said it plans to consolidate manufacturing of several products, eliminate overlapping research, consolidate product lines and shift some manufacturing to China. It also plans to close several operations and move out of 25 buildings.
Also yesterday Agere Systems Inc., the leading producer of communications semiconductors, said it will cut 2,000 jobs by the end of June to reduce costs due to slowed spending by telecommunications carriers.
Agere posted pro forma net income of $4 million for its fiscal second quarter, or breakeven per share, compared to $83 million or 5 cents per share in the year-ago quarter. It also warned that expects a third-quarter pro forma loss of 6 cents to 8 cents a share.
The majority of the position to be cut are in Agere U.S. manufacturing facilities.
