Samsung Electronics Co. is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to cut thousands of jobs globally, according to people familiar with the situation.
The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of the workforce in those markets, although the numbers for each branch may vary, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other subsidiaries abroad and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the person said.
The South Korean company has about 147,000 overseas employees, more than half of its total workforce of over 267,800, according to its latest sustainability report. He does not plan layoffs in the domestic market.
Samsung employees in various teams in Singapore were invited to private meetings with human resources managers and their reporting leaders on Tuesday and were briefed on the details of layoffs and severance payments, said another person familiar with the matter.
“Some overseas subsidiaries are making routine workforce adjustments to improve operational efficiency,” a Samsung spokesman said. “The company has not set a target number for any specific position.”
Shares in Samsung have fallen more than 20 percent this year as the world’s largest maker of memory chips and smartphones struggles in key markets. It lagged behind rival SK Hynix Inc. in memory chips used for artificial intelligence (AI), and made a slight advance on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in the production of custom-made chips for external customers.
The task of guiding Samsung through its latest challenges now falls to Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, the grandson of the company’s founder. The 56-year-old was acquitted of stock manipulation charges in February after years of legal trouble.
Samsung is in the unusual position of catching up to SK Hynix, which has taken the lead in making high-bandwidth memory chips paired with Nvidia Corp.’s AI accelerators. for training artificial intelligence models. Samsung abruptly sacked the head of its chip business this year, with the newly appointed boss, Jun Young-hyun, warning that the company must change its workplace culture or be caught in a “vicious cycle”.
The company has reduced the size of its workforce in the past as it navigates the notoriously cyclical memory chip market. Samsung recently cut about 10 percent of its jobs in India and parts of Latin America, according to one of the people.
In the latest effort, Samsung is likely to cut less than 10 percent of its total overseas workforce of 147,000, the person said. The company aims to preserve manufacturing jobs while reducing management and support functions. Figures will be affected by local labor regulations and financial priorities.
Samsung has also been at loggerheads with employees in South Korea. The largest of the tech giant’s several unions has called for the company’s first strike in May.
© 2024 Bloomberg LP
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
