OSAKA -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. plans to cut half its approximately 16,000 contract workers as part of cost-saving measures, company officials said Wednesday.
The cuts will include employees hired through temp agencies. Clerical workers, sales staff and plant workers will be subject to the reduction. The world's biggest consumer electronics maker will keep outsourcing software development and other highly professional work.
Matsushita also has 13,000 more payroll workers than it needs and plans to move 10,000 of them to electronics parts and services divisions. Some will be shifted to cover jobs currently done by the outside workers.
An early retirement plan was introduced last month for its regular employees.
Hit hard by this year's info-tech slump and a sputtering global economy, the company said Friday that it expects to book a consolidated net loss of 68 billion yen for the fiscal first half to Sept. 30, due to hefty appraisal losses on its shareholdings.