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HP wants HUNDREDS of hapless staffers OUT by April - trade union

782 Brit heads to roll in Q2 as promised cuts kick in

Hundreds of British HP workers are being lined up for the chop this quarter with almost a half expected to come from Enterprise Services.

Ian Tonks, national officer for IT and comms with trade union Unite, met with HP last week - as did the UK Works Council - to thrash out the latest tranche of local job cuts.

He told us: "784 positions are to be made redundant in the UK and Ireland this quarter [by 30 April]; it seems to be a rolling exercise throughout the quarters."

Staff who'd wanted to leap had already volunteered in previous redundancy rounds, and those leaving now had either lost faith in HP or were being shoved toward the door, the Unite man claimed.

As outlined by The Channel in October, the remaining redundancies are to come from Europe where 7,100 positions will evaporate before the end of this financial year in October.

There are growing concerns the UK is shouldering the brunt of these regionally, and that some roles are being sent to areas where the average salary is lower. When we put these points to HP, it refused to rule this out.

Around 1,100 UK staff were due to be axed during HP's fiscal Q1 - ended last month - but more than 300 of those did not exit, pushing the redundancies into this quarter.

Of the 784 people to go in Q2, HP expects more than 300 to come from the Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing (ITO) division, according to a staff memo leaked to us.

Maurice Mattholie, veep for ITO Services UK and Ireland, a division of Enterprise Services, stated in the staff missive:

"It is expected that up to 329 positions within the ITO UK and Ireland organisation will be impacted through workforce management (WFM) during Q2 FY14."

He added HP remains "fully committed" to redeploying staff or using voluntary redundancy where appropriate.

An Expression of Wish scheme is open to staff until this Friday, with submissions made after this date not considered. Folk in scope for TUPE transfer out of HP are not eligible to volunteer, the note added.

"For a number of groups (job pools), where the required reduction cannot be achieved via EoW, a compulsory redundancy programme may be required," Mattholie added.

The latest tranche of redundancies is all part of CEO Meg Whitman's "Make It Better" programme under which up to 34k people will leave the organisation to reduce overheads.

HP reiterated a statement sent to us last week that redundancies are part of the global turnaround effort, and said it has started consultation with unions and planned to support employees' "employability".

HP employs 15,400 staff in the UK. At least, it did before the pending job cuts in Q2. ®

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