In the time-honoured tradition that if you have bad news to impart, you put it out on Friday and hope few will notice and most will have forgotten by Monday, Tektronix Inc, Beaverton, Oregon last Friday announced a massive 1,000 people from the company’s 16,900 workforce would have to be laid off by the end of the firm’s fiscal year on May 28. Some 300 in the Information Display Group were told on Friday that they no longer had a job, and affected employees in other groups and administration will get their pink slips in the next few weeks. While orders and sales in our current quarter are higher than last year’s levels, expenses have continued to grow faster than sales, said president David Friedley: there’s just no question that we must reverse that trend to get Tek back on the track to growth and profitability. Most of the reductions affect managerial and professional jobs, and most will be in the Portland area. The planned changes will lead to significant charges for redundancy payements and restructuring of some businesses being taken with the fiscal third quarter figures to last Saturday, and an overall loss is likely. On the brighter side, the Information Display Group says that it will be introducing a new-generation workstation, one of the first to use Motorola’s 88000 RISC. Tek will focus on portable oscilloscopes, television-related kit and graphics printers and terminals, and it sees growth opportunities in telecommunications equipment, workstations and measurement.
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