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Over 3,000 employees of Toshiba Corp’s group companies in Japan have applied for its early retirement program as part of the company’s turnaround plans, sources familiar with the matter said Friday.
The number represents about 5 percent of the domestic workforce at the Toshiba group, which is trying to rebuild itself after going private late last year in a 2 trillion yen buyout from a consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners Inc.
As part of the efforts, the troubled conglomerate said in May it will slash up to 6 percent of its workforce in Japan, or 4,000 jobs, by offering staff early retirement packages.
The applicants are expected to leave their companies by the end of November and receive their retirement payments as well as assistance in finding a new job, the sources said.
In addition, several hundred employees are scheduled to be reassigned to growth areas such as the infrastructure business to optimize the use of its human resources and its headquarters in Tokyo will be consolidated into another one in the city of Kawasaki, near the capital, they said.
Toshiba had over 65,000 employees in its group firms in Japan as of the end of September. The company is expected to post losses related to the restructuring in the year ending March.
Toshiba, which had been suffering from the aftermath of a spate of problems in the 2010s ranging from an accounting scandal to massive losses at its U.S. nuclear arm, delisted in December last year to avoid increasing intervention from activist shareholders.
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