By Andrew Webb
Journal Staff Writer
Intel Corp. officials on Tuesday confirmed the company will shrink its Rio Rancho work force by at least 1,000 between August and early next year.
Jami Grindatto, public affairs manager for Intel's Rio Rancho plant, told the Journal that Fab 11, which makes older, simpler computer components using 200-millimeter silicon wafers, will ramp down production beginning in August.
The final number of employees who will be affected is unknown, Grindatto said, "but we're saying it will be north of 1,000."
Intel currently employs 4,700 at the site.
The company said in March that increasing automation in the expanding and soon-to-be retooled Fab 11X, coupled with dwindling work for the 17-year-old Fab 11, would likely mean job cuts.
The company began informing Rio Rancho employees of the impending cuts on Monday, Grindatto said. The jobs will be all types, from engineers to technicians, associated with Fab 11, which reportedly employs 1,500 to 2,000 people.
Some of them will move over to the Fab 11X plant.
"By the end of this week, everyone will be on notice that this is going to happen," he said. "This gives them four months to think about their options."
Employees to be let go will be notified individually beginning in August.
Intel offers a two-month paid job-search period, and employees are given a severance package that varies depending on how long the employee has been with the company, Grindatto said.
"It's unfortunate to lose those people who have called Rio Rancho home," said Rio Rancho Mayor Kevin Jackson.
Noreen Scott, president of the Rio Rancho Economic Development Corp., said the job cuts would be the largest she had seen since she began working in Rio Rancho in 1994. However, she said, other area employers such as Eclipse could absorb some laid-off workers.
"If this had been five years ago, I'd be sitting here weeping, because I wouldn't know where these people would get jobs," she said.
Intel announced in February that it would upgrade Fab 11X to 45-nanometer process— the company's most advanced computer chip manufacturing technology. The new tooling will enable Fab 11X, which was built in 2002 at a cost of $2 billion, to produce chips with circuit lines 45nm thick— nearly half the size of current chip technology.
The newer fab already has expanded its operations into a quarter of the space used by the older Fab 11.
As Fab 11 shuts down, its equipment will be shipped to other locations, sold or decommissioned, Grindatto said.
Like any of Intel's 13 operating fabs, Fab 11 could be revamped to a new process or technology.
"We're always pre-positioning our sites for future investments," Grindatto said.
Grindatto said the decision to lay off employees was related to Intel's business, and not local incentives.
The company has received $24 billion in industrial revenue bonds from Sandoval County.
"We want to make sure government folks understand that there was nothing New Mexico could have done to prevent this," he said. "That fab just made obsolete products."
Journal staff writer Sean Olson contributed to this report.
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