Cisco jobs axe swings to Australia

Cisco has begun paring down its Australian workforce, a week after revealing plans to cut a total of 1300 jobs worldwide.

About 20 engineers in its St Leonards, Sydney office are understood to have been made redundant in the past week.

Sources said rumours of a restructure had been circulating since earlier in the month.

Cisco last Monday announced that it would shed 2 percent of its global workforce – 1300 jobs – under a “set of limited restructurings” to simplify its structure.

The round of redundancies comes a year after Cisco declared plans to remove $US1 billion in costs from the company, making some 6500 people redundant to get the ball rolling.

A Cisco spokeswoman declined to comment on the St Leonards redundancies this week, noting that the company was “not releasing any location or number specifics beyond the 2 percent global impact”.

"We routinely review our business to determine where we need to align investment based on growth opportunities,” she told CRN sister publication iTnews, echoing a statement made by the company last week.

“Additionally, we continue to evaluate our organizational structure as part of our plan to drive simplicity, speed of decisions and agility across Cisco.

“As we focus on both of these efforts, we are performing a focused set of limited restructurings that will collectively impact approximately 2 percent of our global employee population.

“These actions, subject to local legal requirements, including consultation where required, are part of a continuous process of simplifying the company, as well as assessing the economic environment in certain parts of the world.”

Cisco had 1114 Australian employees as of July 2011.