back to article Dell axes 900 jobs in Austin plant shutdown

Round Rock's Sword of Dell-ocles has once again dropped on employees of the world's number two PC manufacturer. Dell today said it will close its Austin, Texas desktop PC manufacturing plant and lay-off 800-900 workers. The Topfer Manufactering Center will end its operations by January 1. The sky is apparently always sunny on …

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  1. Hunde Kotze
    Dead Vulture

    Outsource the damn management

    Who will undoubtedly be paying themselves fat bonuses for putting these people out on the street. Pure unadulterated scum.

  2. Chris C

    3 BILLION?!?

    Dell is going to save $3 BILLION over three years by closing down this plant and laying off 800-900 workers?

    First of all, 800-900? What, they don't even know how many workers they employ there? I guess when you're that removed, it's easy not to care about the poor sods who will now need to find other sources of income in this pathetic economy.

    But $3bil over three years means they're saving one billion dollars per year. Let's assume the average factory worker earned $25 per hour (probably much less than that). 900 employees at $25/hr equals $46.8 million per year. Even taking into consideration various taxes, insurance, etc, they're likely paying far less than $100 million per year. So they're paying less than $100 Million in pay, but they'll save $1 Billion? What the hell kind of overhead do they have?!?

  3. Ed Deckard
    Coat

    3 billion!

    Well, maybe if you count all the money they "save" by not buying components for the computers they not going to assemble anymore.

    (Thought up facetiously, but perhaps closer to the truth than I first imagined?)

    Mine's the orange one with the longhorn emblem on the back.

  4. Seán

    Poland

    They'll be shutting the Limerick plant before the end of the year and moving the jobs to Poland. It's going to be such a painful learning experience for them.

  5. SmokeyMcPotHead
    Coat

    And...

    ...the World watches whilst America falls into the big black hole that is recession, taking us all with it if we're not careful.

    Time to move to another planet...who's with me?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    @ SmokeyMcPotHead

    "Time to move to another planet...who's with me?"

    Ron L Hubbard, I suspect!

    /Mine's the space suit coloured one......

  7. alphaxion

    new planet?

    I say we begin building "sea castles" and all live in international waters ;)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @SmokeyMcPotHead

    Maybe this time only America will go down toilet. With China and India still going strong, it may be enough to keep the rest of us afloat, while the Yanks lick their wounds and maybe learn a lesson or two.(wishful thinking on the Yanks learning anything.)

  9. Slaine
    Happy

    so easy to believe, so difficult to verify

    I think I'll just shout POO POO at everything today

  10. heystoopid
    Joke

    Saw this utter nonsense happen a few times before

    Saw this happen a few times before , the wanker that wrote the spread sheet for the savings did not factor in the uneven re-distribution of the work load across the entire network so the cumulative result two years in was after paying out one set of employees and the other areas within went on a hiring spree that actually negated any cash savings and employee reduction by a very wide margin and literally forced the skewing of working hours to cover all the time zone differences and boosted the phone bill to almost double that it was before !

    Alas in two cases when pointed out the numerous errors on their spread sheet prior to implementation both wankers involved in these fiasco's said that was impossible as the increased workload would be easily handled by existing staffing levels , which within the first week proved to be utter fiction of the first order , forcing them to actually hire more staff at a far higher costing then those they had let go literally elsewhere !

    Thus before the crap hit the fan they quickly moved on to infest a large newly privatised Telco with their identical crap mismanagement ideas to continue on making the same mistakes as before !

  11. Richard Gadsden
    Thumb Up

    They all fell for it

    It's midday now, you can admit it's an April Fool

  12. Curtis W. Rendon
    Thumb Down

    @Richard Gadsden

    Unfortunately they announced it Mar. 31 Austin time...

  13. sleepy

    I suspect . . .

    . . . the $3B saving will include Dell Inc leaving US shores and becoming an Asian company with a US sales office. That will finally get the SEC out of their hair (Dell have not been given a clean bill of health yet). Relocation of HQ to Singapore seems to be proceeding steadily towards the time when the head office/subsidiary switch can be flipped over.

    Texas job creation subsidies are ending, so the plant had to close - South Carolina has got a couple more years of taxpayer subsidies. You might think that with 3200 layoffs they had done one third of their 10,000. But unfortunately to keep the essential sales coming in (Dell is financed almost entirely by supplier credit) they had to hire a load more people (including subcontract), so head count isn't actually down much a year into the layoff programme. But morale is.

    I think Dell are fighting for their life not to become another Gateway. Remember IBM sold their PC business for $2B. What's keeping Dell worth $44B rather than $10B?

  14. Ron
    Dead Vulture

    Corporate Terrorist

    Dell is nothing but a Corporate Terrorist that has no problem with devastating their employees lives. How many Billions of dollars do the ultra rich stock holders and top level executives need before they are satisfied. When you have more money that you can spend in ten life times and others are having their homes foreclosed on, can't afford food, and have no choice but to pay out of control gas prices; you are just as heartless as those murdering terrorist in the war. Americans worked hard for Dell and believed in Dell as an American company that treated employees well and offered quality to Americans for a great price. Americans made Dell successful and Dell has shown his true colors by turning his back on us when we need all the help we can get and that means jobs. I will never buy another Dell product and recommend that my company no longer purchase Dell Servers or desk tops. I am ashamed of Dell, greed is the heart of evil.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Chinese citizenship

    I guess final assembly will take place in China now, and it should since most of the components of Dell computers are Chinese in origin. So we Americans can buy Chinese computers from Lenovo, or Acer, or Dell. But Dell should not be allowed to sell to any US government agency since the equipment is of foreign manufacture as opposed to made in the USA. And Mr Dell should go ahead and become a citizen of the Peoples Republic of China, after all he has done for them, maybe they will even give him a medal for his service to China's cause. He certainly should be stripped of his American citizenship for his treasonous activities with China, and his wealth confiscated as the proceeds of a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization (RICO). And let Gates be next.

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