Freescale is expected to axe research and development jobs at East Kilbride, according to East Kilbride News today.

On top of 800 jobs in manufacturing which are due to be lost when the plant closes early next year, a further 27 jobs in the R&D centre could be lost. This is contrary to long-repeated assurances from Freescale management that R&D jobs were safe.

However, last Wednesday the semiconductor manufacturer started consultations with staff which are aimed at agreeing further redundancies at the Scotland site, where about 1,000 people work. 

Problems for the East Kilbride plant started after a consortium of private equity firms led by the New York PE firm Blackstone bought the company at the top of the semiconductor cycles, at the exorbitant valuation of $17.6bn.

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Blackstone loaded Freescale with so much debt, which is owed to bondholders, that Freescale management now has to pay back $700m a year.

Before the takeover by Blackstone, Freescale was operating, as most semiconductor companies do, without significant debt.

Lawyers representing Freescale's workforce are currently involved in trying to get the original redundancy terms re-instated.

Freescale management has been accused by Freescale union bosses of reducing the redundancy terms of workers shortly before announcing plans to sell or close the factory, effectively making them redundant.

Asked about this situation, the new chief executive of Freescale, Rich Beyer, told Electronics Weekly: "As I have learned of the situation, the redundancy agreement at East Kilbride was quite high and it was determined that it was so uncompetitively high that something should be done. That happened pretty significantly prior to any discussion of a shut-down. It was a couple of years ago when demand on fabs was quite high. Then demand dropped off dramatically."

"The events looked like they were connected, but they weren't," added Beyer. "The process to complete this [the negotiations about the reduction in redundancy terms] took over a year. The terms are still exceptionally high.

"The process from the time we negotiated to reduce the redundancy terms, to the time that we completed the talks was about a year. So when we decided to seek other alternatives for the fab, it seemed that there wasn't much time between them, but there was."

See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.