14 DAY TRIAL // Like other IT corporations that plan to lay off a part of their workforce as a means to cut their losses, Dell revealed its objective to reduce its Malaysian workforce by 700 employees. Still, unlike HP and Fujitsu, which have recently been plagued by strikes and walkouts, the emotional response from Dell's employees seems to have taken a different form. Specifically, not long after the announcement was actually made, Dell's website started posting seriously inaccurate product prices, with devices normally priced at hundreds (or thousands) of dollars listed for under $40.
According to the report, Dell plans to let go of 700 employees by June 2010. Of course, this type of decision will never sit well with the people whose jobs are in jeopardy. This supposedly came as a result of Dell's decision to stop using the plant in Penang for the production of notebooks aimed at Latin America, Canada and US markets. Currently, the plant is set to only continue supplying the markets in South Asia and Australia, hence the need to reduce workforce.
Still, even though the employees have not yet had a lot of time to organize a real response to this move on the company's part, it seems that Slickleads may have spotted one. The actual reply on the employees' part seems to have taken the form of numerous price listing errors for multiple high-end (and obviously expensive) products on the maker’s website.
Among the more outrageous ones were the listing of the 3GHz Xeon E3110 for $16.99 (normally for $219.99) and the Xeon E5450 (3GHz) for $39.99 instead of $1,039.99. Even the Xeon 5060 was listed at only $10.99 instead of $699. Of course, there is no proof that the price mistakes were really employee responses to Dell's workforce reduction plans.
The 700 jobs represent 16% of the company's total Penang workforce, meaning that the total number of employees will reduce from the current 4,500 to 3,800.