Du Pont, Frito-Lay, NYNEX to Lay Off Thousands
Barely two weeks after workers returned from their Labor Day holiday, thousands are being met by announcements that their companies will be laying them off.
Among the casualties:
* Chemical giant Du Pont Co. said it was cutting 2,200 jobs.
* Pepsico’s Frito-Lay food-snacks division trimmed 1,800 jobs.
* Telephone company NYNEX Corp. announced plans to lop off 1,400 to 1,900 managers’ jobs.
Du Pont Co., providing the details to a broad cost-cutting plan that it announced this summer, said it will reduce operating costs by $340 million a year at two of its units.
The chemical firm said the cuts would be at the Du Pont Electronics and the Du Pont Imaging Systems and Medical Products units.
Du Pont Electronics will see $140 million in cuts and the elimination of 440 jobs in the United States. Du Pont Imaging Systems and Medical Products will reduce operating costs by $200 million worldwide, including 1,750 U.S. jobs.
Frito-Lay, the country’s leading maker of potato chips and salty snack foods, said the jobs it will eliminate represent about 7% of its work force.
Nearly half the cuts, 800 jobs, will be at Frito-Lay headquarters in suburban Plano, Tex., and its administrative center in Dallas. The rest will be spread around the country at Frito-Lay’s 260 U.S. manufacturing and distribution centers. The company, which employs about 26,000, said the cuts will be in administrative and management jobs.
Frito-Lay aims to save $100 million a year with the reduction, part of a restructuring that began two years ago.
The company’s parent, Pepsico Inc. of Purchase, N.Y., will take a $100-million pretax charge against its third-quarter earnings, largely because of the costs of the Frito-Lay restructuring.
“These are difficult but necessary decisions,” Frito-Lay Chairman Roger Enrico said in a statement. “Streamlining our organization makes us a more agile competitor and allows us to invest more aggressively.” The layoffs underscore just how tough it has been for companies to grow while the economic recovery sputters.
NYNEX Corp., the Northeast telephone company hurt by the recession, said it will cut up to 5% of its 32,000 managers to reduce costs. Most of the cuts will take place in the first quarter of 1992.
NYNEX agreed to extend existing labor contracts and give union workers a 13% wage increase over the life of the pacts, which run through Aug. 5, 1995.
Between 1,225 and 1,475 management employees will be eliminated in NYNEX’s telecommunications group by March, 1992. Smaller reductions will occur in the worldwide services group and NYNEX corporate group.
