Broomfield – Sun Microsystems laid off 301 workers in Colorado on Thursday, the second round of cuts in the network- server company’s global effort to cut costs in a highly competitive tech industry.
“Monday was my 11-year anniversary with Sun,” said Rich Long, 35, a freshly displaced marketing worker, who gathered with other furloughed Sun workers at the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant in Broomfield on Thursday afternoon. “I moved to the marketing division in July and was told that the department wouldn’t be affected.”
Nationwide, Sun cut 1,024 employees, or nearly 3 percent of its global workforce, according to the Colorado Department of Labor. Sun did not release details about cuts in Canada, Europe or Asia.
The layoffs are part of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s restructuring efforts announced in May to streamline and return to profitability.
“As part of that effort, every part of the company’s staffing infrastructure is being evaluated, and (Thursday’s) reductions cross all levels, including vice presidents and directors,” said Sun spokeswoman Stephanie Hess in a written statement.
In June, Sun cut 122 workers in Colorado. In documents filed with the Labor Department, Sun said more employees would be laid off between Sept. 25 and Oct. 6.
Forty-six percent, or 470, of the cuts took place in California, where the company has 14 sites.
In Colorado, which absorbed 29 percent of the cuts, Sun’s Broomfield campus was hit hardest, with 181 cuts. In Louisville, 113 received pink slips.
Sun has other facilities in the state, where a handful off layoffs took place. One worker was cut in Longmont, where Sun has a testing center. Two employees were laid off in Lone Tree and four in Colorado Springs.
For many of the displaced, the news is all a part of working in the high-tech industry, which in the past decade has been boom and bust.
“Upset? Not really. We’ve known our group was doing badly,” said a fired software engineer in Sun’s Customer Networked Services department who declined to give his name. “About 80 to 90 percent of my group was cut.”
Sun now employs about 4,200 at its campuses in Broomfield and Louisville. Sun acquired the Louisville campus last year when it purchased Storage Technology Corp. for $4.1 billion.
The affected employees actually remain on Sun’s payroll until Oct. 2 and thereafter receive an additional compensation package.
Sun reported second-quarter losses last week of $301 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with income of $50 million, or 1 cent a share, for the same quarter a year ago.
Annual revenue has declined in four of the past five years, with the company reporting more than $5.33 billion in losses since 2002.
“I feel good. It’s difficult to work for a distressed company,” said Alice Gasowski, a newly displaced Sun worker, who also stopped in at the restaurant.
She said most of the 15 workers in her division of the Customer Networked Services group – which develops software that connects with clients’ networks – got the ax.
Local officials said that despite the latest round of layoffs, Colorado’s information-technology sector is not failing.
There are more than 100,000 IT workers in the state, with small and medium-sized businesses doing most of the new hiring, said Su Hawk, president of the Colorado Software and Internet Association.
“While Sun isn’t shining as brightly as before, in the meantime, there are 3,000 other companies in our state who continually need to be recognized and seen as very important employers,” she said.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-820-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
