Severance pay figures in Micron Italian job cut talks
Up to 420 workers in Italy are reported to be affected out of a total staff of just over 1,000 (see Micron preps job cuts). Sites at Agrate Brianza, Catania, Naples and Avezzano are said to have been hit.
Micron has said it wants to move support closer to manufacturing sites and R&D centers that are now in United States and Asia, and that this is the purpose of a reorganization plan announced internally by Micron in August 2013. The action is expected to reduce Micron’s global work force by less than 5 percent through the end of fiscal 2014.
In 2013 Micron sold its wafer fab in Avezzano, Italy to LFoundry GmbH although much of its employment at multiple sites around Italy results from its acquisition of memory company Numonyx NV in 2010. The reducing significance of NOR memory and Micron’s dropping of phase-change memory products could also have had a bearing on its Italian job cuts.
The workforce is being reduced through a combination of natural attrition, voluntary redundancy and job cuts, the company said in a statement. It added that it is being done so that Micron has resources in the right places to best address customer needs and maintain competitiveness.
A spokesperson for Micron said the company isn’t discussing specifics per site but did not deny previous estimates of about 420 jobs going in Italy.
"Micron’s restructuring plan in Italy is aimed at aligning Micron’s workforce to its business needs while continuing to leverage the contribution of key Italy-based teams working on current product and technology that do not require proximity with manufacturing sites and customer headquarters." the spokesperson said in email correspondence with eeNews Europe.
The spokesperson added that Micron will work through formal collective layoffs procedures but that it could not give information on the support measures for employees being forced to leave the company as they are the subject of the discussions with trades unions and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. Support measures would conventionally include severance payments and outplacement services to help workers find alternative jobs.
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