Burroughs to Lay Off 300 in Southland
Burroughs Corp. said Wednesday that, as the latest move in a continuing program of plant consolidation, it would lay off 900 employees by the end of September, including nearly 300 at manufacturing plants in Carlsbad, Rancho Bernardo and Pasadena.
The consolidations and plant closings will “enhance the productivity and competitiveness of our operations” and help the company “respond to the market with more efficient manufacturing operations,” said a spokesman for Burroughs, a computer manufacturer based in Detroit.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. Feb. 15, 1986 FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Saturday February 15, 1986 Home Edition Business Part 4 Page 2 Column 3 Financial Desk 1 inches; 24 words Type of Material: Correction
Burroughs Corp. laid off 600 employees at its Memorex manufacturing plant in Westlake Village in January, 1985. An incorrect date was published in Thursday’s edition.
More than 130 Burroughs employees in San Diego County may be laid off when the company moves its printed circuit board production line to a facility in Eau Claire, Wis., and trims other microcomponents operations in Carlsbad and Rancho Bernardo.
By the end of September, the San Diego County layoffs will eliminate 40 jobs in Burrough’s Carlsbad-based distributed systems group and 70 jobs in its microcomponents operation in Carlsbad. Twenty-four microcomponents division employees were laid off Wednesday at the company’s 800-worker Rancho Bernardo plant, just north of San Diego.
Burroughs will lay off 175 Pasadena-based employees who assemble and test the company’s V Series medium-size mainframe computers. Fifty more Pasadena employees will be transferred to a newer plant in Mission Viejo, and 300 others working in a related engineering operation in Pasadena will not be affected by the plant closing.
“The company will try to find jobs within the company for those affected by the consolidation,” according to David Aker, manager of human resources for Burroughs’ Rancho Bernardo facility. The company has already found jobs in Rancho Bernardo for 200 of its Carlsbad employees, said Aker, who suggested that other openings might be found before the end of September.
The company’s 156,000-square-foot Carlsbad plant will be sold, according to a Burroughs spokesman in Detroit. The facility opened in 1969.
“This is a continuation of what they’ve been doing for the past five years since (Chief Executive) Michael Blumenthal arrived,” suggested Dean Gulis, an industry analyst with Roney & Co., a Detroit-based brokerage firm. “Although it’s not very good for the people who get laid off, (the consolidations and layoffs) have left Burroughs with some pretty good margins.”
Net income rose 22% to $115.3 million and revenues rose 8% to $1.48 billion during the fourth quarter that ended Dec. 31, Burroughs announced in January. Net income rose 1.3% to $248.2 million, and revenues rose 4.8% to a record $5.04 billion for all of 1985.
Last month, Burroughs announced that it would lay off 600 employees at its Memorex Corp. manufacturing plant in Westlake Village. The company has more than 62,000 employees worldwide.
Although Burroughs’ stock closed Wednesday at $67.25, down $1.875, analysts played down the effect of the consolidation announcement and linked the drop to IBM’s announcement on Tuesday that it will offer a new mainframe computer.
