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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (59670)	1/30/2002 3:25:00 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Oki cuts wafer output at two fabs; denies layoffs By Jack Robertson EBN (01/29/02 18:21 p.m. EST) siliconstrategies.com Oki Electric Industry Co. Tuesday denied Japanese press reports that it was laying off any workers at two fabs to cut chip production. Shusaku Sumida, president of Oki Semiconductor Inc., San Jose, Calif. said output is being reduced to reflect the current slump, but without any layoffs. "We are controlling production by reducing the number of wafer starts. That means we can temporarily furlough workers on a rolling schedule several days a month," he added. However, he said workers are still paid a majority of their regular daily wage on days they are furloughed. Sumida said it was totally impractical to shut down a fab a few days a month to curtail production. "It takes several days to power down a fab and an equal amount of time to start it back up. It doesn't make sense to do this just to shut down the fab for one or two days. We think reducing the level of wafer starts is the correct way to control production." He said Oki has been following this practice since last October when the global semiconductor downturn became a major problem. "It also allows to keep our work force intact without having to have any layoffs," he asserted. The fabs involved are at Miyazaki which makes ASICs amd voice recognition chips and at Miyagi which makes low density DRAMs for peripherals and other applications.