US tech firms want less staff productivity

Hewlett Packard wants half of its 90,000 US staff to "volunteer" to take 8 days holiday between July and October, or equally to "volunteer" to take a ten per cent pay cut for the period.

A spokeswoman for the company described the decision as ensuring "everybody chips in and takes some measures, and that avoids serious measures".

Analysts said that HP's plans to cut 3000 of its 14,000 managers would ensure plenty of manager-level volunteers for the firm's "take your holiday or take a pay cut" scheme.

Compaq is also looking to cut production costs by forcing 30,000 of its 33,000 US staff to take next week off as holiday.

Compaq said that it would keep essential functions like customer support going during the break.

Sun Microsystems staff are also on "mandatory" holiday next week.

Having many employees on holiday at the same time allows facility cost savings to be made and has short-term accounting advantages.

The measures are necessary to avoid higher levels of job cuts than are already scheduled following slow sales in the PC market.

Tech firms had announced 21,819 job cuts from Monday to Thursday this week alone.