Around 6,000 workers at a Japanese Yokogawa Electric Corp factory will receive additional paid leave due to “plunging sales” of the company’s chip-testing equipment in hard economic times, according to a report.
The AsiaPulse online publication said roughly 6,000 of Yokogawa’s full-time employees in Japan are being asked not to come to work on certain days as there is not enough work to keep them going.
The extra time off will apply to the production and administrative segments, affecting 60 per cent of the firm’s full-time workers. These operations will be suspended giving employees an additional three days month paid leave per month, up until the end of June, said the report.
“The company will pay full wages for the additional days off. It will also seek government assistance, contingent on gaining the support of labor. Directors, executive officers and senior managers have taken pay cuts since October, but the reductions will become steeper next month,” said the report.
Yokogawa Electric downgraded its earnings forecast earlier this week, forecasting a 40 billion yen net loss for the year ending March 31st.
According to AsiaPulse, major South Korean chipmakers have cut-back their orders to March 2009.
In an interview with PACE magazine late last year, Yokogawa Australia managing director, John Hewitt, suggested that the company’s Australian operations are going from strength to strength.
Hewitt said the company plans to keep achieveing in the market and is looking forward positively into 2009.