DuPont to shed 3,500 jobs by 2005

By Randall Chase
Associated Press

DOVER, Del. — DuPont Co. will eliminate 3,500 jobs, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, by the end of this year as part of cost-cutting plans it announced late last year.

The Wilmington-based chemical giant said yesterday it will cut about 3,000 positions, roughly two-thirds of them in the United States and Canada, and expects to trim 500 jobs through attrition. DuPont also will eliminate 450 contractor positions, most of them in the United States.

The company announced in December that it would trim $900 million in costs over the next two years by cutting jobs, streamlining product lines and making other changes. Chairman and CEO Charles O. Holliday Jr. sent employees an e-mail yesterday announcing the job cuts.

"It's just more of the same from Mr. Holliday; he's either selling businesses or cutting jobs," said Dave Gibson, president of Local 1186 of the International Brotherhood of DuPont Workers in Philadelphia. "The one job cut that needs to be made is his."

Gibson, who said last week that he expected about 2,500 jobs would be lost, was surprised by the total.

Holliday said the cuts are painful but necessary as the company aligns resources with market needs and adjusts its infrastructure after the separation of its Invista textile subsidiary.

DuPont shares closed up 63 cents at $44.06 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The job cuts announced yesterday do not include the roughly 18,000 employees of Invista, which is being sold to Koch Industries in a deal scheduled to close by the end of this month. Excluding that division, DuPont employs about 59,000 people worldwide.

A DuPont spokesman said the job cuts will be spread across the company's business units and include all levels of the workforce, including management.

The job cuts are expected to create about $325 million in annualized savings, and the company expects about $375 million in fixed-cost reductions by 2005 by reducing spending in areas such as contract services, supplies and information technology.