Kodak to slash up to 3000 more jobs

Kodak is cutting 3,000 more jobs this year as the picture-taking pioneer wraps up its wrenching transformation into a digital-imaging company focused on consumer photography and commercial printing. By year-end, its work force will slip below 30,000, less than half what it was just three years ago.

On top of 27,000 layoffs already targeted, Kodak said it is reducing its payroll even further to accommodate the $2.35 billion sale in January of its health-imaging unit and its costly foray this week into a high-margin inkjet-printer market dominated by Hewlett Packard. Kodak unveiled a trio of home printers that produce documents and photos using ink cartridges that cost roughly half as much as the competition's. Analysts think the move could trigger a price war.

It is now eliminating 28,000 to 30,000 jobs by year-end, with 23,300 already axed. And the sale of its 111-year-old health unit, partly intended to help fund its $300 million-plus investment in inkjet, will strip another 8,100 jobs. That will shrink its payroll to around 29,000, its lowest level since the 1930s. It employed 64,000 people at the end of 2003 and 145,300 in 1988.

- Let's see. 145,300 jobs in 1988, down to 29,000 by the end of 2007. That's 116,300 jobs. Gone. Poof.

For an idea of scale, that's a bit less than the number of American personnel deployed in Iraq (132,000). In the local context, that is a bit more than the IT workforce in Singapore (111,400). Imagine the entire IT industry over here getting wiped out. That's a lot of people.

Also mentioned above is the ink cartridge war (posted Aug 2003) taking a new turn with Kodak now joining the fray, supposedly selling ink at half the price of HP and the rest. Hmm, I dunno. I reckon my refills are 7-8 times cheaper than the original HP cartridges. Well. It has been 3, maybe 4 years. The war continues.

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