Sony Australia has not ruled out cuts to the local workforce as part of the Japanese company’s global restructuring plan.
Managing director, Carl Rose, said it had already embarked on initiatives locally in an attempt to improve profitability, including price increases for the coming year and a new logistics alliance with DHL.
This week Sony announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs, close factories and reduce electronics investment by nearly a third in response to the global economic downturn.
“The announcement from Sony headquarters yesterday outlines the corporation’s macrostrategy aimed at responding to the global economic slowdown and delivering value to shareholders by the end of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010,” Rose said in a statement to ARN.
“At this time, Australia is faring better economically, than other parts of the world, so these specific initiatives will not necessarily take the same shape locally.
“That said, in times like these, the measure of a good organisation is how effectively it can adapt to movements in the market.”
The global restructuring plan will hit the company's core electronics business, which accounts for more than half of the company's sales with five or six of Sony's 57 manufacturing plants to be closed.
Sony will chop 5 per cent of its global workforce with a comparable reduction in the company's seasonal and temporary workforce.