Disney to begin 1st phase of 7,000 job cuts this week

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Walt Disney Company will begin this week the first of three phases of cutting 7,000 jobs, or 3.2% of workforce, according to CEO Robert Iger.

"This week, we begin notifying employees whose positions are impacted by the company’s workforce reductions. Leaders will be communicating the news directly to the first group of impacted employees over the next four days," he wrote in a memo sent to employees.

"A second, larger round of notifications will happen in April with several thousand more staff reductions, and we expect to commence the final round of notifications before the beginning of the summer to reach our 7,000-job target," said Iger who returned to his position in November.

The US-based multinational entertainment conglomerate announced last month it aims to save around $5.5 billion in costs, saying it faces economic uncertainty.

Disney's global workforce approximately stood at 220,000 as of Oct. 1 last year.

More than a dozen companies in the US, especially in the tech sector, have been cutting jobs as the industry is struggling with lower income, falling ad revenue and fears of a recession.

Amazon, Yahoo, Affirm, Zoom, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, PayPal and Google's parent, Alphabet, have been laying off workers by the thousands in past months.