Have you heard of Medtronic? If you have not then you are like one of the many millions of people who has never heard that name before in their lives. To get you up to speed here is a look at how the company describes itself, “Our medical technologies help make it possible for millions of people to resume everyday activities, return to work, and live better, longer. We’re able to do this with the help of some very special people around the world: 38,000 dedicated employees who share a passionate purpose to improve lives, thousands of medical professionals who share their insights and ideas, and hundreds of advocacy associations that help us share information so people with debilitating diseases know relief is possible.” Basically, the company makes a range of electronically based devices for professionals and patients in the health care field. The company is best known, on the consumer side for making and shipping diabetes testing supplies and post surgical supplies.

It looks like things are not fairing as well for the company as they might like. The company is getting ready to get rid of no small amount of workers in order to make up for its disappointments. The company has shown no growth in recent months in two of it flagship products, and has decided to cut back just about 1,000 workers from its payroll in order to correct the situation and set its bottom line to right.

These job cuts will be more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action several times over. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” On the bright side this means that communities that are set to be impacted by job losses will have some extra notice before the cuts go into effect. Since mass layoff actions can represent a significant decrease in income to an area and may actually case more layoffs in other companies this warning time is critical. Though to the people facing job cuts it may seem insufficient time to find new work.

Interestingly enough while the company seems to be cutting back on a serious number of employees they are also looking to hire on. When all is said and done the company will be looking to add about 1,500 workers to their payrolls. While that may, at the first blush, seem like good news the problem is that the jobs are being redistributed globally. So while some of the jobs will be added to the US the majority of new hires will be made oversees in markets that the company considers to be fast growing.