Swedish telecoms firm Ericsson will cut an additional 150 staff at its two Irish operations.
Ericsson Systems Expertise, the Irish research and development centre for the Swedish multinational, said it hoped to achieve the reduction over the coming months through voluntary redundancy.
The latest cutbacks follow the shedding of 200 jobs in the Republic by the company over the past two years. Last month, the company, which employs 1,850 people at its Dublin and Athlone plants, said it planned to cut 20,000 jobs worldwide because of an international downturn in sales.
It already cut 22,000 jobs in 2001 and the latest round of planned cuts will reduce the workforce to 65,000, from 107,000 last year.
In a statement, Ericsson said the cuts were part of its global concentration of research and development activities into a reduced number of strategic development centres.
It said the concentration of specific products and technologies into fewer and larger units would reduce overhead and co-ordination costs and lead to more rapid and cost-effective product development.
The Irish R&D operations have been at the core of Ericsson's product development activities throughout the 1980s and 1990s and employ just over 1,000 people today. Ericsson Systems Expertise is one of the Ericsson's designated 'hub' R&D centres and is responsible for key software development activities in the new 3G radio domain, principally relating to radio access and control and network management systems.
"The reductions do not affect these core areas and relate mainly to the need to reduce overheads in management and support and to the closedown of some peripheral development areas," the firm said. It added that the reductions were part of its overall response to the continuing downturn in the telecom marketplace and to the lower spending by telecom operators.
Ericsson has been hit by declining orders for 2G mobile phones. It announced a record €3.26 billion loss for the first three months of 2002, a bigger loss than expectations. Sales were weaker and orders in the first three months fell by 40 per cent.
