Sticking with the tradition that if you’ve got bad news to impart, you do it on a Friday, Wang Laboratories Inc signed off last week with the news that it intends to cut its workforce by 2,200 over the 14 months to June 1990: the 7.2% reduction to a target of 28,500 is to reduce costs and refocus the company. As a first step, it will shed over 700 before the end of June this year to bring the total down below 30,000. It hopes to make the cuts through natural attrition but doesn’t rule out layoffs and can’t say how much it expects to save, or in which areas the cuts will come. Wang’s new sales and marketing emphasis will be on government customers, customers in financial service and banking, and manufacturing.
