Fujitsu to axe 2,100 workers

Fujitsu plans to axe 2,100 jobs at four Japanese components plants, turning its focus to domestic facilities after a round of cuts last year when the company shed jobs in the US and other parts of Asia.

Yuri Momomoto, a spokeswoman for Japan's biggest maker of business computers, said the group would eliminate 1.8 per cent of its workforce in the country at two Fujitsu factories in Nagano, one in Hyogo and another in Tochigi. The Tochigi plant will close.

Cutting jobs at home is still rare for Japanese companies, which only recently began breaking the tradition of lifetime employment. After a plunge in chip prices led to a record £2.1bn loss, Fujitsu cut 22,000 jobs last fiscal year.

"Like other Japanese companies, Fujitsu has no choice," Hideo Kito, a fund manager in Tokyotold the Bloomberg newswire. "Labour unions are finding it difficult to protect workers because the companies are in such deep trouble."

The factories affected make parts such as motherboards for PCs and other electronic parts for communications equipment. Workers who chose to leave as a result of the new round of cuts will receive eight to 40 months of salary plus regular severance payments, Ms Momomoto said.

Fujitsu's shares, which have fallen about 37 per cent since the start of the year, ended trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange up 2 per cent at 601 yen.

Ms Momomoto declined to say how much Fujitsu would save from the cuts or whether more job eliminations are planned this year. In March, the senior executive vice president Takashi Takaya said Fujitsu will cut as many as 4,000 jobs in the year ending March 2003 in addition to 2,000 workers the company expects to leave through natural attrition.