Sharp, a maker of many different types of televisions, as well as a few other device, is looking to get rid of a significant amount of its staff. The company is set to get rid of about 15 percent of its workers in order to save on costs. In absolute terms this means that about 8,000 workers are being put out of their jobs.
For now the full extent of the cuts, in terms of locations, is not known but about 3,000 workers will come from manufacturing facilities in both Mexico and China. These two facilities, which are rumored to be up for sale, are representing less than half of the job losses on the whole. The company is not saying where the rest of the cuts are coming from, only that the layoffs are to come.

If even a small portion of the layoffs come to workers in the USA operations owned by the company then the company is likely to trigger a mass layoff action. 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, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly 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.”

Sharp is, of course, not the only company that is looking to cut back on workers in order to enhance its profitability. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of cuts to Motorola Mobility Ventures here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “Sadly the company will be cutting back on a large number of jobs. The company is getting ready to trim out 4,000 jobs from the payrolls in order to cut back on their expenses. The losses will be one third of the total of the locations will be cut. This means the loss of about 30 facilities from the company when all is said and done. While, for the time being the company has not outlined where exactly the job cuts are coming from, or how many locations will be feeling the heat from the job cuts, but the odds are good that at least one mass layoff action will occur… The layoffs are part of a much larger transition for the company, after its recent acquisition by the technology giant Google last year”

The company did post a release about the, staff changes to come, but the release was briefly worded, and uploaded in the form of an image, which prevented this journalist from quoting it directly in this article, but it is available for review.