Cisco, Hitachi Vantara Workers Pink-Slipped in California

Nearly 550 employees at Cisco and Hitachi Vantara are losing their jobs in California.

According to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices with the California Employment Development Department, Cisco is cutting 171 workers at its Milpitas facility and 224 workers at its San Jose facility. The layoffs were scheduled to take place on or within 13 days following Feb. 26. Any affected employees on approved leaves of absence will be laid off 14 days following their return.

None of the employees are represented by a union and don’t have any bumping rights applicable to their positions. Many of the impacted positions are involved in software engineering.

Cisco couldn’t be reached for comment on the layoffs.

Cisco laid off nearly 500 workers in California last August amid reporting a drop in sales to service providers and falling sales in China. That followed more than 400 Cisco workers being let go in November 2018 in San Jose.

Hitachi Vantara plans to lay off 151 employees, including 52 workers at its Santa Clara facility and 99 remote workers. The layoffs are expected to occur on March 31 and April 30. Terminated employees won’t be able to displace other workers based on seniority or any other factor. Impacted positions include software development engineers, master solutions consultants, senior software development engineers, specialist technical consultants and more.

Hitachi Vantara said with its recent integration with Hitachi Consulting and acquisition of Waterline Data, it is transforming into a “new kind of digital infrastructure and solutions company.”

“We are now simultaneously operating in the fast growth data management and analytics market and in the mature global data storage market,” it said. “The global storage market is currently delivering only modest growth – a trend many of our competitors have also noted. We remain committed to the success of both our infrastructure and digital solutions businesses; however, like many of our industry peers, we have had to make some tough decisions to simplify and streamline our operations, improve our financial performance and position ourselves for long-term success – this includes head count reductions to optimize our organization.”

These moves are important to accelerate Hitachi Vantara’s transformation and growth, the company said.

“To support our impacted employees as they transition, we are providing financial assistance and support for continuation of medical benefits, as well as outplacement services,” it said. “We remain optimistic that we can take share from our storage competitors with the recent introduction of the Hitachi VSP 5000.”