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Technology Stocks : Seagate Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hungry Investor who wrote (7246)	4/27/1999 10:41:00 AM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 7841

Read-Rite Fires 1,300 in Thailand, 13% of Staff at Main Plant Read-Rite Fires 1,300 in Thailand, 13% of Staff at Main Plant Bangkok, April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Read-Rite Corp. fired 1,300 workers in Thailand, or 13 percent of the staff at its largest Asian assembly plant, as the No. 1 maker of recording heads for computer disk drives cuts costs after a fiscal second-quarter loss. The fired workers in Thailand comprise about half the 2,500 jobs that Read-Rite said it would cut world-wide, with other jobs lost in Manila, Singapore and the U.S. Read-Rite has a total of about 17,500 workers, and the company said the cuts will result in quarterly savings of $10 million to $15 million when completed. The Milpitas, California-based company makes heads that read and record data in computer disk drives. Drivemakers such as Seagate Technology Inc. are using fewer of these heads as technology improves, while they battle pricing pressures themselves from personal computer makers looking for lower- cost components. The Thai cuts are effective immediately, a Read-Rite executive said. ''There's extreme over-capacity in the hard-disk drive industry, which leads manufacturers to force down the price of recording heads,'' said Pimpaka Nichgaroon, an analyst at Asset Plus Securities Ltd. in Bangkok. ''Cost cutting is a natural outcome.'' The move is a blow for Thailand, which is suffering through its worst recession in a generation. Unemployment has more than doubled since 1997 to about 4 percent, according to the government, though the International Labor Organization puts domestic unemployment at about 8.8 percent. Most factory workers at big plants in Thailand earn between the daily minimum wage of 162 baht ($4.31) and 200 baht. Read-Rite's plant in Thailand is in Ayudhya, about 60 miles north of Bangkok. Seagate, the nation's largest employer outside the government, last year fired about 2,500 workers in Thailand and now employs about 36,000 people at five plants. Bangkok Bank Pcl, the country's largest bank, employs about 25,000. TelecomAsia Corp. Pcl, the largest private phone operator, employs about 7,300.