Fujitsu 'continues to bludgeon through' UK, Ireland job cuts – union 2019 is not looking to be a vintage year for Fujitsu, what with spending millions bidding for a mega-outsourcing contract it failed to win, shuttering offices in 19 countries in EMEA and now a redundancy programme causing trouble. As revealed by The Register in early March, Fujitsu will no longer have a direct presence in many …
Line managers will be told the numbers to cut and the unwritten criteria for selection
The truth of the matter is that line managers always have a mental stack ranking of their teams. They already know who is going to be cut as soon as they're told how many heads to chop.
All the legal process in the world amounts to nowt more than window dressing in every company everywhere. Some are just better at pretending than others...
Best of luck to those about to be forced out. The best revenge is to go get another gig at a better gaff and often for more comp.
Best of luck to those about to be forced out. The best revenge is to go get another gig at a better gaff and often for more comp.
Revenge is even better if you are one of those they would like to retain, but you get out to something better. There is a likelihood approaching certainty that the working environment in Fujitsu will take a turn for the worse as less people still will have to do the same work.
After nearly 20 years in IT I can identify with this. There's been a fair few redundancy processes I've witnessed and the workload never changes except to increase for those left.
I can also identify with the stagnant wages experienced. The firm I work for refuse to review, even for the sake of inflation. The cost is churn which reduces productivity as managers are constantly hiring and training new people who aren't as good as the ones we didn't keep.
It's a self-inflicted brain drain.
IBM has given the industry a fine, teachable moment about having anything written down about the criteria for redundancies with the lawsuits against them for age discrimination. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Fujitsu was paying attention.
I’m not at all surprised that Agenda 2020 failed to turn Fujitsu around. I’m pretty sure they were planning to transition to being a purely digital service provider with as much functionality as possible outsourced or offshored, but in retrospect they really didn’t have a good enough idea of how the organisation should look after the job cuts.
It’s a shame they seem to be going the same way as the other big service companies that started an endless redundancy loop, but senior management brought it on themselves. My sympathies are with those who are still on the inside at this point.
Eh, what with everything being ‘serverless’ in the cloud no one needs physical infrastructure. They just need a good line in hyperbole.
Does anyone else remember the purple Unix servers that Fujitsu made with the slanted top? Appalling design, where the hell was I supposed to put my coffee cup when I’m sat at the console??
In short, ICL was bought by Fujitsu, after a decade or so they decided it could not be sold as a going concern and brought it in house, thereafter shedding a lot of staff.
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limited#Fujitsu
ICL's relationship with Fujitsu started in 1981, when ICL needed a cheaper source of technology to develop lower-end machines in the 2900 range to compete with the IBM 4300 series. At this stage ICL was developing its own LSI technology for use in the higher-end machines, designed as a successor to the highly successful 2966 processor (known internally as S3). ICL had visited a number of companies during 1980 including Fujitsu and Hitachi to identify potential suppliers.
In early 1981 ICL ran into a financial crisis, leading to a full takeover bid from Univac; but the British Government stepped in with a loan guarantee, enabling the company to stay independent. As part of this rescue agreement, Robb Wilmot arrived as CEO in May 1981.
Wilmot cancelled ICL in-house LSI technology development, and negotiated an agreement that gave access to Fujitsu's LSI and packaging technologies, which, when combined with ICL's in-house CAD capability, enabled ICL to design and manufacture the DM1 and Estriel machines, later marketed very profitably as Series 39 level 30 and 80.
Initially the collaboration with Fujitsu was presented as being an arm's length one, to avoid diluting ICL's credentials as a European and British company. However, Fujitsu's involvement with ICL at both the financial and the technical level steadily increased over the subsequent two decades, leading first to 100% ownership and subsequently to the full integration of ICL into the Fujitsu company and the dropping of the ICL brand.
In 1990 Fujitsu acquired 80% of ICL plc from the parent STC plc, paying USD 1.29 billion. In 1998 Fujitsu became ICL's sole shareholder.
An endless circle of reorganisation results in organisational chaos and loss of direction, which means fewer people trying to do a job which simply means stuff goes undone. - going European was never going to end well, - the German Works councils will see to that, which means the axe always falls on those with lesser employment protection rights.
IBM / EDS / HP have all done it and look how that ended - jobs to the lower cost East, customers left high and dry through lack of contact and expertise.
In the race to the bottom everyone, EVERYONE loses.. doesn't matter which market or industry.. We have to focus on ADDED VALUE to justify the higher price, not flogging commodities..
The only thing you can do is keep your skills marketable and keep developing your own knowledge so you are not left holding Windows XP support - or whatever when your skills are no longer relevant you are sunk.
A bit off topic, but watch how long it takes Peugeot to shut Ellesmere Port and other non German manufacturing plants, I give it five years, max.
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