VeriFone slashing
Oahu workforce
Its 77-employee office in
By Peter Wagner
Mililani will lose all but 25 jobs
to layoffs and job transfers
Star-BulletinVeriFone Inc., a high-tech company founded in Hawaii and bought last year by Hewlett-Packard Co., is laying off nearly half of its Oahu staff.
The company yesterday told about 35 of its 77 employees at Mililani Technology Park they won't have jobs after late June.
About 25 VeriFone employees will stay at the Mililani plant while 17 to 20 will transfer to the company's hardware development office in Santa Clara, Calif., according to spokesman Daniel Toporek.
He said the company is making efforts to relocate affected employees at other locations.
VeriFone, founded here in 1981 and now based in California with 2,500 employees in 30 countries, builds electronic-commmerce products.
The company has marketed more than seven million "swipe" terminals used at supermarket checkouts and gas stations to verify credit and debit card numbers.
Toporek said smaller layoffs are also occurring at some other VeriFone offices in California.
The Hawaii layoffs are the latest in a string of job losses that contributed to a 6.4 unemployment rate last year. More than 2,500 layoffs have been announced already this year, as businesses and government agencies struggle with a weak economy.
Toporek said the VeriFone's layoffs were initiated by the company, not its parent, which is working to offset an 18 percent increase in operating costs. Hewlett-Packard has been hard hit by falling prices in the highly competitive personal computer market.
VeriFone decided to consolidate hardware development efforts in California and leave a team devoted to software in Hawaii, Toporek said.
The change will allow VeriFone to market hardware products faster, he said.
"It's a competitive market and we've got a great position in it but we need to retain it and in order to do that we need to get our products out cheaper and faster," Toporek said.
The changes won't affect VeriFone's equipment-testing facility, which employs about ten people at Laupahoehoe on the Big Island, Toporek said.
