Ericsson to shed 700 UK jobs
11 November 2009
Ericsson has announced that it intends to withdraw its UK-based research and development and global service delivery activities from Coventry.
Some 700 employees are expected to be affected by the proposed withdrawal which is expected to be implemented by mid 2010.
“These are just the sort of high quality jobs the West Midlands can ill afford to lose,” said Mick Laverty, Chief Executive of Advantage West Midlands. He added: “Advantage West Midlands has an excellent working relationship with Ericsson’s UK operations team and we were delighted when the company became the first official occupier at Ansty Park just six months ago. This announcement is a shock to the region and a sad day for the workforce at Ericsson. Our number one priority now is to get partners together as soon as possible to minimise the economic impact of today’s news on Coventry and the wider region.”
The announcement is part of the company’s ongoing global cost reduction activities and are subject to consultations with trade unions and employee forums. The proposed changes do not affect Ericsson’s local customer activities in the UK where growth in services has been significant over the past three years, particularly in managed services.
In January 2009, Ericsson announced global plans to reduce cost by SEK 10 billion from the second half of 2010. This will be achieved by leveraging synergies between Ericsson’s different technologies, in-house and acquired, and by taking advantage of opportunities in the transformation to all-IP. The actions also include a reduction of the number of technology platforms and increased re-use of software components. This efficiency work is resulting in a concentration of the number of R&D sites worldwide.
The Coventry based employees handle global R&D for part of Ericsson’s network infrastructure portfolio and the global service delivery center provides services across a number of products. Ericsson intends to move R&D of current products and global services, currently based in Coventry, to countries where there are already significant scale and product synergies.
Ericsson will now enter into consultation with union and employees representatives. Due to the proposed withdrawal of the majority of activities based at Ansty Park, it is likely that this facility would no longer be viable for Ericsson. This will be discussed further during consultation.
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