dfw.com — National Semiconductor received a lot of press last month for announcing plans to give every employee a 30-gig video iPod as a reward for its "best fiscal year". The company then laid a bunch of people off and demanded the iPods back, claiming that they were just loaners.
Jul 5, 2006 View in Crawl 4
gregdJul 5, 2006
Which works out to roughly 2.5 million dollars....which may also be enough to pay for these 35 salaries.
monkeybopJul 5, 2006Submitter
CNET just posted a complementary article about this. It provides a reason for the lay-offs:"Shortly before the July 4 holiday, National Semiconductor asked for voluntary resignations at its Arlington, Texas facility, Weir told CNET News.com. The layoff is due to the downtime the company will have as it converts from 200mm to 300mm wafers. The 35 employees who agreed to the voluntary resignation were asked to either return their iPods, or buy them 'at a fair market used price.'"<a class="user" href="http://news.com.com/2061-10788_3-6090790.html">http://news.com.com/2061-10788_3-6090790.html</a>
Closed AccountJul 5, 2006
@Seumas,While i still digg your comment, you cant exactly say that 8,500 cost 300 dollars each. Im sure Apple gave them a discount for buying in such large quantities(or maybe they just went to costco :-P )
cybernezumiJul 6, 2006
Nah, call the RIAA and rat on the company for possessing pirated music (since I doubt the company owns any of the CDs the music was ripped from and I also doubt they're bothering to reformat the iPods...)
davidepaulaJul 6, 2006
HAHAHAHAHAHA. I love when emplyers do stuff like this!
dhughesJul 8, 2006
@ seumas I agree with you, I think we are both saying the same thing although not so clearly on my part I don't think my previous comment turned out they way I intended. I think the employees are the losers, it's the company I blame.
shawnblogJul 9, 2006
I've been doing a lot of whining about getting "laid off" from textamerica but they didn't ask me to return my gift iPod and that's good because I had to sell it.
kyrgizionDec 2, 2009
At my company, every piece of equipment that goes home with a person comes with a written contract stating that the items remain company property at all times and the user is obliged to return the items at the first such request.
chazandchazSep 11, 2010
Its a real bummer about the layoffs but national semiconductor really makes great chips. I just purchased a bunch from here: http://netsemi.com/m-44-national-semiconductor.aspx
chazandchazSep 11, 2010
Its a real bummer about the layoffs but national semiconductor really makes great chips. I just purchased a bunch from here: http://netsemi.com/m-44-national-semiconductor.aspx