Motorola Inc announced plans Wednesday to phase out two semiconductor manufacturing lines in Arizona, continuing its consolidation and adding more job cuts to the sweeping reductions already made.
The move comes with worldwide semiconductor sales off sharply and Motorola on the slide from the world's fourth-biggest chipmaker a year ago to No. 7.
The company, which already has announced 30,000 job cuts this year -- 20 percent of its work force -- said the action continues its policy of shutting down older plants and investing more heavily in advanced technology.
In the announcement from Austin, Texas, the headquarters of its semiconductor operations, the chip and cellphone maker said it will phase out two wafer fabrication lines in Mesa over the next two and a half years. It said it hopes to transfer many of the 1,200 workers involved to Motorola jobs elsewhere in the Phoenix area but expects "some" job losses. The undetermined reductions will be on top of 30,000 job cuts to be completed by year's end, shrinking a work force that stood at 147,000 at the end of last year.
Motorola spokesman Ken Burns said from Arizona that the phase-outs result largely from the company's recent policy of aggressively consolidating older manufacturing lines.
"Clearly the downturn has been a factor in perhaps speeding that up a little bit," he said.
The company has closed five other wafer fabrication lines since 1998 -- two in Austin and one each in Irvine, California; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and outside Glasgow, Scotland -- with two others being phased out now in Austin and elsewhere in Mesa.
While manufacturing at the Mesa site is being phased out, production will be expanded at the company's facilities in nearby Chandler and Tempe. Motorola has owned the Mesa facility since 1967.
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