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A spokesperson for the company told ElectricNews.Net that the cuts are to come in the form of voluntary redundancies over the next three to four weeks. She said reaction from employees to the cuts was good. "Obviously taking part in the program is not for everybody, but for the right person, maybe someone who wants to travel, this could be just right," she said.
According to the company, employees have been offered at least four months of wages in addition to IEP3000 which the company expects employees to spend on further education, travel or career counselling.
The spokesperson also said that the cuts were not coming in any particular sector in Intel Ireland.
She said, "Ireland will continue to play a major part in Intel's global strategy."
The announcement comes just two days after the company issued its second quarter results for 2001, recording significantly lower revenues than last year. However the company told ElectricNews.Net that the decision to make these cuts was not a reaction to the poor results, but was part of the 5,000 global job cuts that Intel announced in March.
On Wednesday Intel, which until Thursday employed 3,300 people at its plant in Lexilip, Co. Kildare, issued its second quarter results for 2001, recording steep drops in both revenues and profits. Net income for Q2 2001 was USD854 million, down a massive 76 percent from the second quarter of 2000.
The results followed a period of increasingly ominous indications from the Leixlip-based semiconductor giant. Earlier this week it was reported that staff at Intel's Leixlip plant have had their half-yearly bonus cut in half because of the impact the downturn in technology sales has had on the corporation's profits. Earlier this month came reports that Intel was considering closing down its entire Leixlip facility for three weeks to cut costs amid a continued global slump in demand for computer chips. It is one of a range of cost-cutting proposals under consideration by senior management in the Republic and at other Intel plants worldwide.
Nevertheless, according to the spokesperson, the company has said it remains committed to building its third microprocessor fabrication plant in Leixlip, Ireland and it intends to resume construction on the facility "sometime in early 2002." Thus far, the company has spent approximately IEP2 billion on the FAB 24 plant. That facility is to produce the company's current and next-generation processors, including the Pentium 4.
Nearly 1,500 construction jobs were lost at Leixlip as a result of the decision to postpone work on the new Fab 24 plant, which was almost half finished
It is understood that Intel is now accelerating its transition into the full-scale production and sales of its Pentium 4 processors, which are currently being produced in the Leixlip facility. The Pentium 4 is expected to be priced at around USD800.
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