News

GE Power Systems to Cut 1,000 Jobs

July 24, 2002 by Jeff Shepard

GE Power Systems (Atlanta, GA), a primary business unit of General Electric Co., announced that it will eliminate 1,000 jobs over the next nine months from its turbine production facility, leaving about 3,600 workers. The company will cut another 1,000 jobs from its Greenville, SC, plant. Further reductions will come in 2003, due to a reduction in demand for power generation equipment.

The company plans to lay off 250 hourly workers by the end of this year. The remaining job cuts will include 400 salaried employees. Employees 55 years or older with at least 25 years of service, possibly one-third of those laid off, can take early retirement packages. Employees were told of the layoffs by videoconferencing. If the market improves, the company could restore jobs, but the company doesn’t anticipate that in the next nine months. The company reported that shipments of gas turbines are forecast to decline by 80 percent or more over the next two years. As part of its restructuring, GE Power Systems plans to move its Pensacola, FL, operation to Schenectady, NY.

"We have always made it clear that, after several years of exceptional growth, our turbine business would at some point return to more normal order levels, and it is," said GE Power Systems President and CEO John Rice.