Vestas to Cut Jobs

Vestas is a company that many people may not have heard of unless you happen to be very big into solar power. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “For more than 30 years, Vestas has operated in the field of wind power. During the first quarter of 2012 Vestas passed 50 GW of installed capacity, thereby consolidating its position as the world’s leading manufacturer of wind power solutions. Having installations in 69 countries, Vestas is by far the most global wind turbine manufacturer.”

Sadly this green energy company is getting ready to cut back on about 1,400 more jobs in order to set it balance sheet to right and save a substantial amount of money. Since the company is international some of the job cuts are coming from the US, and they are likely to qualify as a mass layoff actions. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The company is doing all of this to cut back on $311 million from its annual budget. The company is attributing the need for these cuts to a loss of sales due to a smaller consumer base that is about to buy wind power products.

This is not the first time that the company has resorted to layoffs in order to set its budget to right. Here is a look at some of the cuts made by the company earlier in the year, “Today the job cuts came to Vestas Wind Systems A/S and while that company may not be a household name they are the biggest, in terms of the revenue they generate on an annual basis, wind turbine production company in the world. Vestas, which is based in Aarhus, Denmark, is making a double hit to the economy. First off, they have already made an announcement that it will lay off 2,335 workers around the world. If that was not enough the jobs of another 1,600 workers are currently held in the balance. The company has told the U.S. Congress that if they do not extend tax breaks for renewable energy than the company will have to get rid of about 1,600 workers in order to make ends meet.”

All in all these cuts are going to, when the year is up, represent a loss of more than 1 percent of the staff of the company.