Posted on: Thursday, August 30, 2001

Kyocera to cut 10,000 jobs, report says

Associated Press

TOKYO — Japan's Kyocera Corp. plans to cut about 10,000 jobs amid the global electronics slowdown, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The cuts will be centered on subsidiaries in the United States, the nationally circulated Yomiuri newspaper said, and could be carried out by the end of this year. The daily quoted company sources it did not identify.

The report said that most of the reductions will come at U.S. subsidiaries such as Kyocera Wireless Corp. and Tycom Corp.

Kyocera Wireless, based in San Diego, California, was formed when Kyocera bought the mobile phone manufacturing unit of Qualcomm Inc. Tycom is based in Irvine, California.

Jay Scovie, a spokesman for Kyocera International in San Diego, said he was not aware of any planned layoffs at company facilities in North America.

But Scovie said company officials in Japan were unavailable to discuss the report because of the time difference.

"I don't believe there is any basis for this report," he said.

Kyocera Wireless employs about 2,000 people in the manufacture of wireless phones in San Diego. Tycom has about 300 workers and produces carbide cutting tools for the printed circuit board industry.

Kyocera Corp. is headquartered in the western Japanese city of Kyoto.

In Japan, the company will achieve cuts by eliminating contract employees, broadly reducing part-time hires and transferring up to 230 regular employees to related companies, the Yomiuri said. The company employs about 51,000 workers worldwide, said the paper, Japan's largest.

High-tech stalwarts such as Toshiba Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., NEC Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. have recently announced job cuts aimed at addressing the global slump.

Toshiba announced this week it is eliminating 17,000 jobs, or about 9 percent of its worldwide work force, in the next three years.