Motorola Slashing Design Staff in Half

Motorola isn’t doing so well these days, especially when you consider that they absolutely dominated the early cell phone market and then they recaptured our interest with the RAZR line. Seemingly out of ideas, they just started pumping out variations of the RAZR and people lost interest.

In an effort to keep the mobile division afloat, Motorola will reported cut its “head count” at the company’s Birmingham design center in half. As it stands, there are 121 designers working at the center in England, but Moto feels that half of these jobs are redundant. If they don’t start handing out the pink slips, the company feels that they might have to shut down the design plant altogether.

In their own words:

It is proposed that the Birmingham site will need to reduce headcount by approximately 50 per cent which may potentially require the closure of the site. Therefore, all employees will initially be placed at ‘risk of redundancy’ whilst alternative opportunities including redeployment, relocation, flexible working/home working or the opportunity of a ’service site’ arrangement are investigated as part of the consultation process.