MATSUSHITA-TOSHIBA OHIO CRT PLANT CUTS 25 SALARIED JOBS
MT Picture Display Corp., the Matsushita-Toshiba CRT joint venture, pared 25 salaried positions from its Troy, O., CRT plant, amid a 20% drop in tube prices. The job cut leaves the factory, which operates 5 production lines, with 217 salaried and slightly more than 1,000 hourly workers. Matsushita and Toshiba merged tube operations last year to form MT and trimmed 250 salaried and hourly positions at a CRT plant in Horseheads, N.Y., in Dec.
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The salaried workers will get severance packages and the hourly workforce was told to prepare for a slowdown this month. The factory, however, won’t be idled and workers furloughed as they were last year, Human Resources Gen. Mgr. Gregory Tatusko told the Dayton Daily News. Tatusko didn’t comment last week.
“It’s something that was difficult to do, but something we felt we needed to do in order to be competitive in a very competitive market,” Tatusko told the newspaper. Industry officials have blamed the layoffs on an influx of less-expensive tubes imported from China and Malaysia. The International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a preliminary decision in Nov. imposing duties on tubes imported from the Far East and is expected to release a final ruling in April. Color TV imports from China and Malaysia climbed to 2.65 million in 2002 from 209,887 in 2000.
Meanwhile, the Troy factory is gearing up to start production of 30W and 34W flat-faced tubes in June-July, sources said. The factory would be the only one in N. America producing those sizes and would eliminate the need to import the tubes from Japan. “We're bringing the production here because of the HD transition,” a source close to the company said: “The 16x9 format is beginning to expand here and the cost of producing the tubes would be cheaper” since MT won’t have to pay a 15% import duty.
At the same time, about 60% of the glass manufacturing equipment from Corning’s former TV glass plant in State College, Pa., has been packaged for shipment to China, a Corning spokesman told the Centre Daily Times newspaper. The equipment is being trucked to N.Y. Harbor and loaded onto to ships for a 4-6 week trip to China. China’s Henan purchased the equipment for more than $45 million last year and the plant closed in Sept. About 150 workers remain employed at the plant packaging the equipment, a process that’s expected to be completed by late summer. Once the equipment has been removed, Corning will put the factory up for sale, Corning spokesman said.
The rapid shift to flat-panel displays and microdisplay- based rear projection TVs was underscored by a report released last week by iSuppli/Stanford Resources. The research firm said microdisplay-based rear projection TV sales will hit 3.3 million units by 2006, vs. 2.9 million for CRT models. By 2008, CRT- based sales will decline to 1.2 million units, while those containing microdisplays climb to 5.1 million, iSuppli/Stanford Resources said.