The employment restructuring plan being negotiated by Digital Equipment Corp’s France subsidiary and its unions does not involve a single outright lay-off and has received a favourable response from the authorities, said Jean-Paul Nerriere, managing director of Digital France, in an interview with Les Echos. The company is trying now to eliminate 727 jobs compared with the 446 in its previously rejected plan. It’s true that the results in France are not up to the recovery seen in the rest of the group. Last year, we achieved revenues of 5,500m francs (about $1,000m) and a net loss, he said. Nevertheless, the favourable response we’ve received for our new product lines, and some recovery of the market leads us to hope for an improvement in the situation. One of the essential conditions for recovery resides, however, in a reduction of our cost structure. Nerriere says Digital has arrived at its job reduction target via compensated part-time work, long-term vacations, voluntary redundncy incentives and pre-retirement at 55 or 56 years old. It has not yet been accepted, but Nerriere remains optimistic: We are persuaded that the company has the necessary strength to rebound.
