Irvine, California-based Western Digital Corp, is to lay off 750 employees worldwide after reporting second quarter losses of $82.3m (CI No 3,579). The job losses will be made as part of a streamlining of the hard-drive manufacturer’s Personal Storage Division and Enterprise Storage Group into a new Drive Products Division. Its plant in Tuas, Singapore, will be closed, and production transferred to nearby Chai-Chee. These changes will cost the company approximately $45m during its third fiscal quarter. In 1998 WD cut 480 jobs from its Singapore plants, and the latest batch of lay-offs will reduce the company’s international workforce to 12,000 from a 1997 high of 16,000.
