Employment: HP+ Compaq: 15,000 additional lay-offs

The merger of Hewlett Packard with Compaq will cause redundancies. Yesterday, shortly after the publication of the press release announcing the buyout of the number 3 worldwide by the number 2 of computer manufacturers, the revelation of the impact in terms of employment was a shock. Normally, by adding the employees of both groups, they should have reached the number of 149,000. However, the total will only reach 135,000. The president of the new group, Michael Capellas has thus announced on Tuesday afternoon that 15,000 additional jobs will be shed. Both companies had already shed 17,500 jobs in total during the previous months: 8,500 for Compaq and 9,000 for Hewlett-Packard. The social cost is thus almost doubled because of the merger!