29/04 Panasonic axing 40,000 jobs

Fumio Ohtsubo, president of Panasonic Corp., center, is flanked by Seiichiro Sano, Sanyo Electric Co.'s president, and Shusaku Nagae, president of Panasonic Electric Works Co. at a news conference in July 2010. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Panasonic Corp. plans to cut nearly 40,000 jobs worldwide by the end of March 2013, the largest ever downsizing by a Japanese manufacturer.

The program will mean a 10-percent reduction in the group's global work force and is expected to bite deepest into divisions and subsidiaries abroad.

The 40,000 figure, due to be announced on April 28 along with the group's fiscal 2011 management strategy, includes about 20,000 jobs sliced from the group's payroll through the sale of its Sanyo Electric Co. subsidiary's semiconductor business, which was announced in summer 2010.

That leaves a total global staff estimated at about 360,000 people at the end of March. The group is planning to cut that by about 20,000 within two years.

Further sales of group businesses and a voluntary retirement program will help slash the payroll.

Panasonic acquired a majority stake in Sanyo in 2009, and, on April 1, Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works Co. became wholly owned subsidiaries of the group.

As of the end of March 2010, the group's work force consisted of about 220,000 Panasonic Corp. employees, about 100,000 Sanyo employees, and about 60,000 Panasonic Electric staff. About 20,000 of the Sanyo staff are leaving because of the sale of its semiconductor division.

The group will reorganize its corporate structure by whittling down its 16 business divisions to nine in January 2012.

Business divisions that the three group companies run separately--head office functions, white goods (e.g. washing machines) and overseas manufacturing--will be restructured and scaled back. The group will focus resources on TVs, white goods, and environment-related businesses.

The Panasonic group cut about 20,000 jobs in 2001 shortly after the collapse of the IT bubble economy. It slashed about 15,000 jobs in fiscal 2009 when it posted a deficit in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. One of its competitors, Sony Corp., shed 16,000 jobs in 2008.