Conference 7.286::digital

 :-(

    Are all 250 history or are they being given a chance to accept new
    positions within the remainder of the Colorado Springs operations?
    
    If not, best of luck to all who are moving on....
    
    Mav

    >The rest of the employees -- about 125 temporary and 250 permanent
    >workers who make an average $40,000 a year -- will be fired,
    >said David Greenlee, manager of the Digital plant at 301 Rockrimmon
    >Blvd.
    
    I was under the impression that if you got FIRED you couldn't collect
    unemployment.  If you're layed off or project ends e.g., like the movie
    business after a film completes you can the collect unemployment.
    
    Did the Manager just use the wrong terminology?

    From today's Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph:
    
    Digital to cut 375 jobs in downsizing in Springs
    
    About 375 well-paying jobs will be lost over the next three months as
    Digital Equipment Corp. closes its Colorado Springs
    manufacturing operation and moves the work to New Hampshire.
    
    Only about 12 employees will be offered transfers to the Salem, N.H.,
    plant where the assembly work on storage equipment is to be
    consolidated.
    
    The rest of the employees -- about 125 temporary and 250 permanent
    workers who make an average $40,000 a year -- will be fired,
    said David Greenlee, manager of the Digital plant at 301 Rockrimmon
    Blvd.
    
    "The transfer will be a gradual process, starting in July and ending in
    September," Greenlee said Monday.
    
    The consolidation leaves Digital with about 1,000 employees in Colorado
    Springs.
    
    Employees were told Monday, and most said they expected the news.
    
    "It's unfortunate, but I can see both sides of the tracks," said Steve
    Payne, a soon-to-be-jobless Digital employee.
    
    The announcement comes a week after Digital announced it was
    reorganizing its storage business unit. And the job loss is small
    compared with what Maynard, Mass.-based Digital has gone through in
    recent years. It has eliminated 21,000 jobs in Massachusetts
    since 1989.
    
    Analysts viewed the move by the computermaker favorably.
    
    "Digital is very aggressive in consolidating their businesses and
    really streamlining," said Jon Oltsik of Forrester Research Inc. in
    Cambridge, Mass.
    
    "So this is not a surprise. Digital is really cutting down to the core
    to compete. They've done some very good things on the business side
    in the past few months, and unfortunately sometimes that's going to
    involve cutting jobs and closing plants. From a company perspective
    it's very positive. From a local perspective, it really hurts."
    
    Payne views the Digital layoff as part of a local pattern that started
    when Cray Computer Corp. closed last year, Quantum Corp. moved
    overseas the disk drive manufacturing operation it bought from Digital
    in 1994 and laid off 1,300 employees, and Apple Computer Inc.
    decided to sell its Fountain plant to cut costs.
    
    "Of course it hurts," Payne said. "But I have options. I'm going to
    take it one day at a time. I'm going to take what's available for
    assistance, make a plan and go forward. I will carry on with life."
    
    Still, And he knows it could be worse. As a permanent employee, he is
    eligible for transitional assistance.
    
    "I feel really bad for the temporaries. Temporaries don't have
    anything. There's no help for them at all," he said.
    
    Local economists and economic development officials say the layoffs
    hurt because the jobs paid so well.
    
    But they are confident the workers will be easily absorbed by the
    booming local economy, which has added thousands of jobs every
    year, albeit many are low-paying retail and service industry positions.
    
    "It's bad news, but it could be worse," said economist Dave Bamberger
    of Bamberger & Associates. "Nobody likes to see a major
    employer downsize, and it's going to have some impact.
    
    "But if you are going to have layoffs, you'd like to see them occur
    during economic boom times because it means a greater likelihood
    these people will be absorbed."
    
    He said many Digital workers may find work when Rockwell Semiconductor
    Systems hires 1,300 for a new $1.2 billion facility it is
    building in the Springs. That plant is expected to open in about a
    year.
    
    The layoffs and transfer of work will vacate about 200,000 square feet
    of Digital's 763,000-square-foot plant. About 300,000 square
    feet of the building was vacated by another disk drive manufacturer
    earlier this year. That means Digital has about 500,000 square feet of
    empty office and manufacturing facilities it is trying to lease.
    
    "We'd look at a sale of the facility, but it would take an investor of
    some size," said Robert Rennick, vice president of Digital's storage
    business unit. "So our primary goal is to lease the space."
    
    And Rennick said the remaining 1,000 Digital employees still based in
    the Springs are secure in their jobs.
    
    "We have a major North American customer support center here," Rennick
    said. "Digital has a very long-term interest in this facility."
    
    The Digital space is very attractive to companies considering
    relocating to the Springs, said Robert "Rocky" Scott, president of the
    Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp.
    
    "Our greatest problem today is a lack of availability of space," Scott
    said. "That's the silver lining in this cloud. We have needed the
    space."
    
    Bamberger said there is a warning for Colorado Springs in the Digital,
    Quantum and Apple changes.
    
    "It's a reflection in the overall trend toward lower-cost
    manufacturing," Bamberger said. "It's getting very difficult to compete
    because of the wage base in Colorado Springs -- for high volume, low-cost
    manufacturing jobs."
    
    Digital stock was down 62.5 cents Monday, closing at $45.621/2 on the
    New York Stock Exchange.

RE: .3 by TENNIS::KAM 
    
>>    I was under the impression that if you got FIRED you couldn't collect
>>    unemployment.  If you're layed off or project ends e.g., like the movie
>>    business after a film completes you can the collect unemployment.
    
>>    Did the Manager just use the wrong terminology?

Since the quote was not in quotation marks it was probably the newspaper
reporters interpretation.  The manager probably said layed-off.  But what
sounds worse (which makes better news)?  

Judy

    You may be FIRED for cause, (theft, drinking on the job, etc.)
    if so, you do not collect, but if you are fired for other causes,
    you may be able to collect.
    
    Dave

  Why are only 12 of these ~260 people being offered jobs in Salem, NH?
Does that mean that the other 250 were not allowed to apply for jobs in
Salem? Or that only a few chose to apply for these jobs because they don't
want to move to NH?
  Is it really cheaper for Digital to hire and train a mostly-new workforce
to do this work in Salem than to move a large number of people along with
the work?

    
>  Why are only 12 of these ~260 people being offered jobs in Salem, NH?
> Does that mean that the other 250 were not allowed to apply for jobs in
> Salem? Or that only a few chose to apply for these jobs because they don't
> want to move to NH?
    
    I'm not sure about the exact numbers 12 and 260 but I believe the story
    is more like Salem will add only 12 positions to integrate the CXO
    work.  The the rest of the work done by the CXO positions will be
    absorbed by the existing NIO positions.
    
    This says nothing about individual people.  I would guess that some of
    those 12 will be transfers from CXO.  I'm sure the other CXO folks can
    apply for any openings in Digital. However given the current layoffs
    throughout Digital that's probably a tough road to staying in Digital.
                                                        
    Greg
                        
                       

To answer why more people aren't going to Salem from CXO:

There are very few open positions in Digital that pay relo, for starters. Does
anyone have an idea of the cost of moving approx. 2000 miles??

Plus, there is a hiring freeze on for the next two Quarters according to our
leaders.

Also, is it really "cost effective" to move any position below engineer level?

Many of those 250 are assemblers and tech's.

And the biggest reason of all: Why would any sane person move from Colorado
to Mass.?!!?!? ( many :-)  )

Let's face it, Digital wants out of manufacturing anything but Alpha chips.

Regards from CXO,
MB

>> And the biggest reason of all: Why would any sane person move from Colorado
>> to Mass.?!!?!? ( many :-)  )
    
    Salem is in New Hampshire.
    
    Larry
    
    (Moved from Colorado to NH in 1985 -- Am I still an insane?? :-)
    

    
     <<< Note 4675.9 by LILCPX::BUCHHOLZ >
    "Let's face it, Digital wants out of manufacturing anything 
     but Alpha  chips."
    
     Does Digital really need to manufacture Alpha chips?  
    
     Yes, I agree we need to design them, or at least some of them.  But 
     does design really imply that we need to manage the production line?  
     We haven't got expertise in super high volume chip manufacturing and 
     super high volume is needed to make a state of the art chip plant pay off.
    
     Samsung appears to have the skills and volume we need.  Is there more
     to the Samsung arrangement than has been announced?

    
    
    re -.11
    
    didn't we invest something like $600M in the new FAB plant in Hudson?
    As I recall, someone at the highest level of the corperation was the
    one to drive this investment.... So there's probably a lot of politics 
    involved with the decision to continue being the primary supplier of
    Alpha chips, instead of simply designing them and having someone else
    do the manufacturing.
    
    I could be wrong though......
    
    

With someone with a silicon history at the top of the company, I don't think
we are likely to see us oursourcing our silicon fabrication.

Jim

    re: .10
    
    That was rhetorical question, right?   You really didn't want
    confirmation of your insanity/sanity.

    
    	Rember that Digital Semiconductor doesn't do just Alpha chips.
    We also do StrongARM, Networking, Bridges, and Graphics/Multimedia
    chips as well.
    
    Ron

    
    I'm asking these questions because I really don't know the answers.
    
    1. Is it a strategic necessity that Digital manufacture Alpha CPU chips?
    
    2. If we designed Alpha chips and partnered with someone like
       Samsung to make them, would we get systems on the market at 
       as quickly as now?
    
    3. Would the Alpha architecture be more viable with other systems companies
       if Digital were to give up sole control?
    
    According to analysts, Hudson costs Digital about $1/share in operating
    losses.  It has to be near the top of the S.L.T. problem list.  If they
    could move Hudson off Digital's books without taking a write down, would 
    it be wise?  When does Hudson break even otherwise? 
    
    

>   3. Would the Alpha architecture be more viable with other systems companies
>      if Digital were to give up sole control?
    
    Look what happened to the DLT once Digital wasn't associate with it. 
    Everyone seems to be moving to DLT these days instead of Exabyte.  It's
    now a viable technology and everyone's considering it.  When we had it
    all people thought about was TK50's and nothing else.

    Whilst those DLT facts are true, I think they're not conclusive on
    their own.
    
    You could equally rephrase them equally accurately as  "while TK* was
    less than 300MB and an RF73  was a lot of disk, no-one was interested.
    Now 1GB is trivial, a DLT2000 does lots of GB and lots of GB/hour, and
    quite a lot of people are interested".
    
    Chicken ? Egg?
    regards
    john