LONGMONT, Colo.—Seagate Technology on Wednesday laid off 187 employees at its Longmont facility, part of a restructuring plan prompted by a decrease in demand for the company’s hard disk drives.
The plan also includes a 10 percent pay cut for the remaining 1,460 workers in Longmont.
Seagate announced earlier this week it would reduce its U.S. work force by 10 percent. Worldwide, the company is eliminating 2,950 jobs, or about 6 percent of its total work force.
“It’s just been understood for a while that our customers are feeling the effects of the economy and that, in turn, affects us,” Seagate spokeswoman Cindy Martini said. “It wasn’t unexpected, but it’s still painful.”
She said managers notified affected Longmont workers Wednesday.
The cuts were made “pretty much across the board—engineering, support services like marketing, communications, IT,” she said.
Affected workers will be paid through mid-March, “even though most of them are leaving today,” Martini said, adding that they’ll receive severance pay after mid-March.
Seagate said it will incur pretax charges of about $90 million as a result of the restructuring, but the changes ultimately will save the company about $130 million a year.
Even with Wednesday’s job cuts, Seagate remains Longmont’s largest private employer. The Longmont facility is the largest of the company’s four design centers.
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Information from: Daily Times-Call,
