Australia and NZ unshaken by EDS 'rebalancing'

The New Zealand and Australian operations of EDS will not - for the time being at least - be affected by a pruning of staff in US EDS offices, says Sydney-based EDS spokesman Brian Finn.

EDS will cut 2000 jobs, or about 1.4% of its workforce, chief executive Dick Brown announced last week. The move is due to a "spending slowdown" and unrelated to the IT services provider's relationship with the disgraced WorldCom, the company says.

"Obviously there are more [consequences] to work through, but at the moment these moves are confined to North America," Finn says.

Australia and New Zealand have already been through "a rebalancing exercise", he says. Rebalancing means aligning the workforce with workloads and the more successful areas of the company's business.