Irish operations may not escape as Siemens announces 4,000 job cuts

Siemens, which employs around 1,300 people in the Republic, has announced plans to shed 4,000 jobs worldwide. While the location of the cuts has not yet been decided, a spokesman for the Irish operations has warned that world economic conditions are so bad the Republic may not escape the job losses.

"There are no plans at the moment to cut jobs here but one would have to say that things are unpredictable. . . and really we would look at this business on an almost weekly basis," he said.

The spokesman said the company had proposed shedding 4,000 jobs at its fixed-line communication unit ICN and as part of that plan had already entered into talks with unions in Germany. Around 1,300 jobs are to go in Germany with the remaining 2,700 set to go in other international operations.

Of the 1,300 people employed by the company in the Republic, 300 work for the ICN division. The company said the 4,000 figure for job losses was a "planning guide".

It is understood that all of the jobs could go by September 2003, which includes 1,300 cuts already announced on August 21st. The additional 2,700 are on top of 17,800 cuts announced for ICN in the past year. As part of those cuts just 12 jobs were shed in Ireland.

ICN is the second-largest unit at Siemens in terms of sales but has been the problem division at the electronics and engineering giant.

It is racking up losses amid overcapacity and a lack of demand as clients such as Deutsche Telekom struggle with debt after spending heavily on high-speed mobile licences.

In the nine months to June 2002, ICN made a loss of €366 million after a full-year 2001 loss of €861 million. ICN is one of three units in the company's information and communications division. The other two units have posted nine-month profits.

The mobile infrastructure and handset unit, ICM, made €72 million for the nine months, while IT consultancy unit Siemens Business Services made €75 million.

Since last year the group has announced it is shedding more than 32,300 jobs, representing about 7 per cent of the workforce.