HP lays off 1200 French workers.

EUROPEMEDIA-(C)2003 Van Dusseldorp & Partners - http://www.vandusseldorp.com/

Hewlett-Packard France announced Tuesday that 1204 employees have volunteered to leave the company as part of their post-merger restructuring plan. Union leaders accused HP of buying off the volunteers by offering generous redundancy packages worth between 25,000 and 250,000 euros. HP employs approximately 6,000 people in France.

In September 2002, the company announced that it planned to lay off 1206 employees in France following the HP-Compaq merger. At least half of the planned job cuts were to be made at HP's Grenoble campus, a consequence of the transfer of HP's PC development centre to Houston, Texas. 370 jobs would be eliminated from HP sites in the Paris region. Additional jobs would be lost in Sophia Antipolis, in the south of France, and from the closure of a manufacturing plant in Annecy. ((Distributed via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com))