Tech giants scramble to track down workers
Published: 13 Sep 2001 10:25 BST
Terrorist attacks on Tuesday, including the crashing of hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, left many technology companies scrambling to track down employees.
Sun has about 340 sales and support employees assigned to work on the 25th and 26th floors of the south tower of the World Trade Center, but at any given moment many of them are working with customers in the field, spokeswoman Elizabeth McNichols said Wednesday.
All the World Trade Center employees are safe, Sun found by Wednesday afternoon. But Phil Rosenzweig, a director in Sun's software organisation, was killed in one of the hijacked planes, McNichols said. Rosenzweig, who was 47, worked in the company's office in Burlington, Mass. He had been a Sun employee since 1991 and was flying to Los Angeles.
On its operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India, Sun Asia South's vice president and managing director, Lionel Lim, said: "Currently, Sun is not closing its facilities." The company employs 900 staff in the region, 450 of whom are in Singapore.
"However, security is monitoring conditions and will make decisions as appropriate. Sun will maintain its mission-critical support services, which are now more important than ever," Lim added.
IBM, which has "several" offices in New York and Washington, D.C., declined to reveal its total headcount there, although the company is "still working to account for all of our employees who may have been working or traveling in the US," said a company spokesperson.
IBM did not have offices in the World Trade Center.
On Wednesday, Big Blue evacuated its offices in Malaysia after a bomb threat.
Another company that runs offices in New York and Washington, D.C., is Hewlett-Packard.
Although an HP spokesperson confirmed that "no HP employees were scheduled for business travel on any of the aircraft involved in the incidents," the company could not ascertain if any of its staff were victims of the terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, HP's offices in Asia are open Wednesday and "employees working in New York City and Washington, D.C., will receive specific guidance on whether to report to those facilities or work remotely," the spokesperson noted.
CNET Singapore's Anand Menon contributed to the report. News.com's Stephen Shankland reported from San Francisco.
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