HP Set To Cut More Than Five Percent Of Its UK Workforce

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced it will cut 1,124 jobs in the UK, prompted by falling demand for PCs and the resulting reorganisation of the company.

Overall, the company plans to lay off 27,000 employees globally by the end of 2014.

A week ago, HP posted mostly positive quarterly results, with the sales of servers, storage and networking equipment offsetting the losses made by the PC business.

Not so merry Christmas

HP currently employs more than 15,000 people in the UK. This number is set to decrease as the result of a turnaround plan drawn up by CEO Meg Whitman, first announced in May 2012 and updated in October 2013.

In the next few years, HP will attempt to move away from the traditional PC market, which has been shrinking year by year as consumers replace their desktops with tablets and smartphones. Instead, the company will focus on the enterprise market and R&D.

According to the Unite union, 618 jobs will be lost at the facilities in Bracknell, 23 in Sheffield and around 500 in Warrington. HP has assured its employees that some of them will be re-employed by the company in different capacities. It has also promised to support workers that will leave the company for good.

The job cuts are expected to come into effect by the end of January 2014.

In an interview with the BBC, Unite officer Ian Tonks blamed the lay-offs on the US management and called the incident “a hammer blow to the UK’s IT sector”.

HP remains committed to its commercial PC business, which includes everything from thin clients to powerful workstations and still makes money. In the summer, the company updated its desktop workstation portfolio with four new machines, and launched the industry’s first workstation ultrabook.

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