The News & Observer will eliminate about 20 jobs in the latest cost-cutting effort by the Raleigh-based media company.

The staff reductions announced today will affect most areas of the company, including the newsroom. Some employees will have the opportunity to accept voluntary severance packages, but a few positions will be eliminated through layoffs.  

The newspaper publisher continues to see declines in print advertising revenue, mirroring similar trends nationwide. Online ad revenue is increasing, but is still a smaller part of the total.

"Although our declines are not as steep as they have been in previous years, revenue trends remain negative year-over-year," publisher Orage Quarles III wrote in a memo to employees this morning. "As a result, we must continue to look for ways to offset this trend by managing expenses.

"We understand how difficult this message is to receive given other reduction programs we have done over the last few years," he wrote. "However, we are working hard to implement new products and improve our revenue performance to help us navigate through these difficult times."

Eastman Kodak is closing its technical response center in Durham and laying off 48 employees.

The center provides support for retail customers that operate the company's picture kiosks.

Kodak filed a notice late last week with the N.C. Department of Commerce under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The WARN notice said Kodak Eastman is outsourcing the work done at the Durham center. Its closure date is June 11.

Of the 48 employees being let go, four are customer service supervisors and 44 are field engineer positions, according to the WARN notice.

Rochester, N.Y.-based Kodak is outsourcing the work to Datrose, a company that is expected to hire in the Triangle as it takes over the work, said Chris Veronda, a Kodak spokesman.
 

Cisco Systems announced a major restructuring today that is sure to send shudders through the company's facility in Research Triangle Park and other sites worldwide.

The computer networking giant said this morning it's planning to cut 550 positions in the fourth quarter of this year. It wasn't immediately clear what the moves mean for Cisco's operations in Research Triangle Park, where the company employs 4,900 workers and contractors.

Cisco said its is shutting down some operations, refocusing others and evaluating functions that are not profitable and may not have a future.

The moves signal that Cisco is getting back to its core business as a designer of the pipes and valves that carry and regulate Internet data.

Wells Fargo & Co. is eliminating 310 mortgage jobs in the Carolinas as home loan applications slow, the Charlotte Observer's Rick Rothacker reports.

The biggest cut will affect 259 positions at a mortgage application center in Wilmington, a closure that was disclosed in a state regulatory filing last month.

The remaining jobs are in Raleigh and Fort Mill, S.C., bank spokesman Josh Dunn said. The company declined to provide a breakdown on those two locations.

Several hundred ConAgra employees who will lose their jobs in the coming weeks were treated to a private job fair Wednesday to help ease the economic impact of one of the region's biggest layoffs in years.

Nearly two dozen employers set up booths at the job fair at ConAgra's facility in Garner that used to make Slim Jim snacks. More than 500 ConAgra workers are slated for layoffs in April and May, as the company winds down operations in the wake of a 2009 explosion that killed four people.

ConAgra's human resource director, Tenisha Barnes, said the job fair was a success.

"Steady traffic all day. Great turnout," Barnes said by e-mail. "Recruiters impressed with the caliber of employees – longevity with company, varied skill sets, positive energy/attitudes."

More than a dozen companies are expected to offer interviews and jobs this month exclusively to local ConAgra employees who will lose their jobs in April and May.

About 520 remaining ConAgra employees are slated to lose their jobs in what will be one of the region's biggest mass layoffs when the snack food maker's Garner facility closes in late May.

To help the affected workers find other opportunities, ConAgra and the Capital Area Workforce Development Board have scheduled an employment fair for March 30, about two months before ConAgra shuts down the local facility that produced Slim Jim snacks.

The thriving Garner facility was never able to recover from an explosion in 2009 that killed four people.

Japanese drug maker Eisai plans to eliminate about 70 employees at its research and manufacturing campus in Research Triangle Park as part of a broader U.S. restructuring that will cost about 600 jobs.

As with other pharmaceutical companies, Eisai is streamlining operations as it faces increasing competition from generic medicines, lower reimbursement fees and slower sales of its own products, including the Alzheimer's treatment Aricept.

Eisai, which has its U.S. headquarters in New Jersey, expanded its RTP operations last May, opening a $100 million, 65,000 square-foot facility. The company employs about 325 people at its RTP campus, which includes another, 190,000 square-foot manufacturing and research facility.

A cosmetics maker in Pender County is laying off 330 people, according to a mass layoff notice filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce.

New York-based Coty Inc. is shutting down its manufacturing facility in Rocky Point, about 115 miles south of Raleigh. All the jobs will be eliminated by Aug. 31.

A third of the positions to be cut will be machine operators, assemblers, manufacturing leaders and mechanics.

Some of those jobs could be transferred to a the company's plant in Sanford, Coty officials said. Coty's Sanford plant, which currently employs about 800, is undergoing a $12 million expansion and will add 140 positions.

The Rocky Point plant makes nail polish, nail polish remover and hair remover. Coty's line of beauty products includes Calvin Klein, Chloé, Jennifer Lopez, JOOP!, Sarah Jessica Parker and Vera Wang.

Coty bought the Rocky Point facility from Del Laboratories in 2007. Coty officials had been considering the plant's closure since at least last year, according to local news reports. In December, 110 lost their jobs when Coty closed its distribution center in Rocky Point.

IBM, one of the Triangle’s largest employers, is instituting another round of layoffs across its North American operations.

The extent of the cuts in this region is not clear. New York-based IBM employs about 10,000 people at its Research Triangle Park campus.

The layoffs began Thursday morning and affect employees within IBM’s Global Business Services division, according to a labor union trying to organize IBM’s workers.

“Right now we’ve got probably about 250 people we know were cut; we expect that number to climb,” said Lee Conrad, national field coordinator of Alliance@IBM.

ConAgra will close its Garner Slim Jim factory in May and lay off hundreds of remaining workers, nearly two years after an explosion damaged the facility and killed four people.

The company plans to lay off about 234 employees on or around April 16, according to a notice filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The plant is scheduled to close on May 27, and about 200 remaining employees will be let go or transferred by then, spokesman Dave Jackson said Monday.

After reaching a deal with the union that represents hourly employees, ConAgra agreed to provide severance, outplacement services, job retraining and performance incentives to help employees with the transition, he added.