DuPont Co. (Wilmington, DE) plans to reduce its worldwide workforce by 6%, or 3,500 positions, by the end of 2004 as part of a $900 million cost-cutting program announced late last year. The company gave no specifics on planned job cuts for individual business units, but says the impact will be primarily restricted to North America and Western Europe.

The reductions will not affect the INVISTA subsidiary, which the company is divesting. DuPont says it plans to eliminate about 3,000 positions through severance programs and about 500 jobs through normal attrition.

The workforce reduction is a "difficult but necessary" action "as we "align our resources with market needs and adjust the size of our infrastructure following the anticipated separation of INVISTA," says Charles Holliday Jr., DuPont's chairman and CEO.

The cost-reduction program announced late last year also will include cutbacks in expenditures for contract services, supplies procurement and other operations, and product-line consolidation.