Unisys Corp has now given details of its restructuring, saying that it will lay off 6,300 people, 1,200 of them outside the US, and take the total cut up to 7,000 to 8,000 people by attrition. The cuts will reduce its cost base by $400m to $500m in 1990 so that it can break even on sales of only $8,500m – it did just under $10,000m last year – but will lead to a hefty charge against profits for the third quarter – it did $151m net, 77 cents a share, on sales of $2,268m a year ago. In the reorganisation, mainframe manufacturing at Tredyffrin, Pennsylvania will transfer to Clear Lake, Iowa, with engineering remianing at Tredyffrin. The St Laurent, Canada, power supply manufacturing and engineering unit will be closed during the first quarter of 1990 with engineering support going to Rancho Bernardo, California. The Peripherals Group in Santa Clara, will continue to be consolidated into other Unisys facilities, but disk drive and hard disk platter manufacturing is excluded from that – that business is expected to go in a management buyout. An initial 3,200 employees in the US will be getting their pink slips this week.
