Dell to shutter US plant, cut 900 jobs, generally mess up someone's holiday
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted October 7th 2009 11:02PM
posted October 7th 2009 11:02PM
A report just crossing the wires says that Dell is slated to close one of its US manufacturing plants and cut about 900 jobs -- though that's a pittance compared to the approximately 76,500 workers Dell employs. The company's Winston-Salem, North Carolina desktop production facility will shut down come January 2010, though Dell says around 600 employees will hit the road in November -- just in time for the Holidays. The company says the closure is "part of an ongoing initiative to enhance the long-term value it delivers to customers by simplifying operations and improving efficiency," or as we'd put it, "it looks good on the books." Obviously this isn't the happiest news for the employees being cut, but it's also a familiar tune given the economic events of the past year.
Why are you blaming DELL for an NVIDIA problem?
every single company that sold that nvidia card had issues, not just Dell... I had 3 sony's, 4 HP's and an Apple to deal with all with the same issue. Dell had the best after sales out of all of them.
Awesome. Good job Dell.
Why am I blaming Dell?
@JOSK# You're kidding right. They chose to put a badly designed Nvidia GPU into their P.O.S M1330 and they've only half heartily backed the issue. Nvidia has paid Dell through the nose for this problem. What do the customers get. Jack shit! Dell extended the warranty for 1 year on my system. These M1330's are failing every 6 months. Do the math $2000 for a computer, $50 just to talk to someone to fix the same issue that's now failed three times for me and now they want $550.00 for an out of warranty service to fix it again. I don't give a rats ass if other manufacturers are experiencing the same problem. Dell should stand by their products. They know this issue is a major problem. They only chose to throw owners a bone by extending the warranty issue for a short term period and then hope we will all just disappear because they know customers will be in the same boat only a short time further down the road.
@ Lionel
I've spent three days on the phone with Dell and because my M1330 is now past the extended warranty, they've refused to do anything for me unless I pony up for the tech call fee and then fleece me again to put in another GPU that will guaranteed fail within a short period of time. Just look at all the comments you have to deal with on that link you've given me and tell me how many of them are happy customers. Dell has chosen to throw a lot of loyal customers under the bus with this M1330 and rather than give your company one red cent more and have to look at a dead paperweight of metal everytime I open up my closet, I'm in the process of installing the intel integrated motherboard in my M1330 as well as replacing the DVD drive for the third time. After 10 years of doing business with Dell, I'm completely done with them and no amount of P.R damage control will change that.
@DAZA Good job, for what exactly? Ask all the M1330 owners with the Nvidia chip how satisfied they'll become when their warranty ends and they're stuck with a notebook that won't even last them out the year.
@The Joker: The mayor of Winston-Salem was quoted on NPR as saying that all of the city incentives will be repaid. The story made no mention of what would happen with state incentives. I'll believe the city's reimbursement when I see it!
This was nothing but trouble from the start. This has ended precicely the way I - and many other residents - said it would right after the plant was originally announced.
Also of note, the local NPR story said the number of layoffs is to the tune of 600, which jives with every other local story regarding that plant. Dell never came anywhere close to the production numbers or employee numbers they promised.
Watching you guys trying to figure our Supply, Demand and Pricing Strategies is just sad.
If these are the brains we're talking to when we're crowdsourcing... Good God. Does any of you have a college degree?
"Raise the prices and you'll make more money!"
Geniuses. They're Dells! They're commodity PCs. Who cares. They people who lost their jobs because of this should take this opportunity in a massive recession and upgrade their skills. I just hope they weren't getting stock as part of their compensation. Ouch.
They could lay off 600 who actually make the company money, or they could lay off 6 executives who do shit.
Well they have to cut something after purchasing Perot Systems for 30 billion dollars.
Yaaayyyy!!! The recession is over. Oh wait.
I know companies have to make profits, but think about how messed up the lives of those 900 people who got fired will be for quite some time, including their families. Other currently unemployed and looking for jobs will see this and will further lose hope. This is a mental reminder to everyone who reads this that the recession is very much alive and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
All this so that Dell's revenue increases from $61.11 billion to $61.86 billion (number mostly made up) and so that Michael Dell can add a bit more to this paltry 12.3 billion net worth.
I can understand small businesses, but I will companies like Dell, Microsoft, Sony, IBM, etc would stop laying off people..... guess not gonna happen.
Dell sucks at everything lately, maybe they should just stop trying and be content with the role of being the current day Packard Bell
The reason this plant was shutdown is the same reason why Dell shut 3 other plants down in the US. That is because all the Desktop volume for North America is being made by Foxconn in Juarez Mexico now. This transition has been going on since September of last year. The only thing it has to do with economy is to put more money in Mr. Dell's back pocket. The only Desktops/Servers/Laptops that are not being produced outside of the US are the ones for the Government.