Spansion oh Spansion....

My oh my...finally it's true, it's confirmed. Spansion (Penang) Sdn Bhd has offered a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) to more than 700 of its 1,300 employees, after its parent Spansion Inc said it would slash its global workforce by 35%, or about 3,000 employees, at its manufacturing facilities. The news of VSS had actually been circulating around for quite sometimes even before the Christmas last December when profits and sales were badly hit by the economy downturn.

Sources said employees of the flash memory maker were told that they have until this Friday to decide on the offer. It is learnt that two-thirds of the staff to be laid off are from the manufacturing section. Bear in mind that this is for the permanent worker of the company in Penang. There will be more if you include those contract workers. My junior is one of the contract worker and they have been told that their contract will not be renewed, meaning they will only work until March....good luck to him for finding a new job fast!

A statement from Spansion president and chief executive John Kispert released earlier said the global recession was forcing the company to make the very difficult decision in order to bring costs in line with the current expectations of significantly reduced revenues. Well, basically every US company is having hard times now. A real big test for them in 2009...