Hitachi axes hard drive jobs in San Jose

THE MERCURY NEWS said that Hitachi Global Storage will lay off 400 people in its San Jose plant.

Currently, the firm employs around 3,800 people in San Jose, said the Mercury News, and acquired the plant after it took over IBM's hard drive business last year.

Earlier this year there were indications of job losses in San Jose, with an internal memo showing its Shenzhen, Chinese plant was to start full production in Q4 of this year.

That was denied by a Hitachi GST spokesperson, here, with a man ticking off our own Eva Glass for the very suggestion.

Just a few weeks later, Hitachi said it was pouring half a billion US dollars into its Shenzhen plant, here.

The statement Hitachi made back in June was that by Q4 2006, it would make 3.5-inch disk drives and be "ultimately capable of producing disk drives in varying form factors".

The Mercury News quotes Hitachi representative as saying its long term objectives and mission in San Jose do not change.

But, Hitachi, what are those long term objectives? µ

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