Intel Israel on Monday began the process of laying off employees, combined with voluntary retirement of some, as part of its global move to drop 11% of its workforce. According to estimates, in Israel the move will touch several hundred employees, including from the company’s plants in Kiryat Gat, a development city in Israel’s southern district, halfway between Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva.
Intel Israel’s workforce is estimated at 10,000, some in its production plants in Kiryat Gat ad Jerusalem, others in its R&D centers in Haifa, Petach Tikvah and Yakum.
Intel’s global layoffs of 11% of its entire workforce—which comes to 12,000 people—began last week, but was delayed in Israel on account of the Passover holiday.
According to DailyMaily, most of the laid off employees will receive eight salaries as their severance pay, but some will receive a full year’s pay. Some laid off employees ranked low in their evaluations, some are old enough to consider retirement. Meanwhile, Intel is expected to hire new employees for its upgraded Kiryat Gat plant which is due to be inaugurated in 2017, and which is built ob the foundations of two companies, Fab 28 and Micron.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced on April 19 a restructuring initiative that “will allow Intel to intensify our investments in the products and technologies that fuel our growth, and drive more profitable mobile and PC businesses. We expect that this Initiative will result in the reduction of up to 12,000 positions globally. This will be achieved by voluntary and involuntary departures, global site consolidation, and efficiency initiatives.”
But some, like Forbes’ Bill Conerly, blame Intel’s management’s failure to steer the ship right for the massive, painful layoffs. “Go back three years and ask why Krzanich was keeping all of those 12,000 people on the payroll,” Conerly wrote last month. “Or go back three months and ask the same question. The boss might well have said something like, ‘We’ve been ramping down our headcount; now we’ll move faster because markets changed more rapidly than we had expected.’ But that’s not what happened. The sudden, massive layoff looks (at least to this outsider) as if management had been in denial or had failed to take the unpleasant steps it knew it needed to take.”