Meg Whitman’s Big Hewlett Packard Move: Firing 30,000 Workers

Meg Whitman has barely gotten her feet wet with the team at Hewlett Packard after being hired at the company’s new CEO in September 2011 and now she’s preparing to fire upwards of 30,000 employees, an amount equal to somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 15 percent of the company’s overall workforce.

According to sources at AllThingsD the layoffs will be core element of Whitman’s restructuring plan for the company and it will affect all divisions within the tech firm.

Since the report circulated other sources have begun second guessing that number, predicting expanded and reducing layoff numbers. Hewlett Packard currently employs nearly 320,000 people and it is believed that HP will eventually fire 48,000 staffers.

The move to remove a large portion of the company’s workforce is believed to be a result of the company’s desire to increase capital so it can widen its investments through more buying power. According to the NY Times:

“Ms. Whitman’s new H.P. seems unlikely to abandon any of its major businesses, which besides PCs and printers includes selling computer servers and data storage systems, consulting, and providing low-end services like managing call centers.”

In the meantime the restructuring plan will not result in 30,000 immediate layoffs as the company plans to remove extra workers over a period of at least 12 months, if not longer.

In settling out the positions of long-term employees HP is expected to offer at least 5,000 employees the option of voluntary retirement packages while the remaining 25,000 employees will be let go without any type of incentives.

Meg Whitman is expected to formally announce the company’s restructuring plan on Wednesday.