COLORADO SPRINGS — California-based Atmel laid off 266 employees from its Colorado Springs semiconductor plant Tuesday, its second round of layoffs in five months that has eliminated more than 500 jobs amid a worse-than-expected sales decline.
The plant employed 1,480 people before the layoffs, which come as the Colorado Springs job market continues to deteriorate — the local unemployment rate jumped to a 21-year high of 8.6 percent in March, with more than 26,000 people out of work.
The company told the plant’s employees to attend a meeting Tuesday afternoon and hired Colorado Springs police to provide security in the parking lot of its plant at 1150 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. in southwest Colorado Springs. All but one of the positions eliminated were in the plant’s manufacturing operations. The company also cut 27 jobs from the 520 employees at its San Jose, Calif., headquarters.
Atmel laid off 245 employees at the plant in December and shut down for 11 days beginning Dec. 24 as part of a companywide restructuring program that affected 11 percent of its 6,800 employees and was designed to save $18 million a year.
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