HP cutting over 1,000 jobs next year in UK

Hewlett Packard has announced that the new year will see another large number of its UK employees let go from the company. In total as many as 1,124 will be made redundant by the end of March 2014.

According to union leaders (via the Guardian), the unlucky number will be made up of people from the Bracknell, Sheffield and Warrington facilities, though HP has continued to claim that it has not decided where the cuts would be made. Workers however were said to have been told yesterday, which seems like a great way to ruin their Christmas – even if it does let them get a little more prepared.

Meg Whitman has helped improve the company share price, alongside firing thousands. Source: Wiki

The unions are understandably a little upset by this news, with one spokesperson suggesting that it would attempt to block the redundancies, seeing it as a destruction of the UK's IT sector, following on from previous job cuts by HP.

In typically stale, business lingo, HP skated around the issue when it said in a statement:  “The proposed UK workforce management plan is part of HP's global multi-year productivity initiative that was announced on 23 May 2012, and updated at its securities analysts meeting on 9 October 2013, to address current market and business pressures in support of HP's turnaround in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

HP as a whole has suffered in recent years, with falling PC sales and the growth of cloud computing leaving it struggling. However, it has seen some turn around recently with an investment into the cloud analytics business and cutbacks (including jobs) which have led to a boosted share price.

KitGuru Says: Horrible timing for these people to hear they're losing their jobs next year, but at least they aren't losing them before Christmas. 

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