THE Let the worldwide layoffs begin Thread pt 2 (merged)

[leaflight]

200k layoffs in America in Oct, and then again Nov.

Also avg of 135,000 foreclosures and bankruptcies every month 40/60.

Intresting times.

[lowem]

Berkshire Eliminates 21,000 Jobs as Manufacturing, Retail Slump

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported 21,000 fewer employees than it had at the end of 2008 amid a slump at the firm’s manufacturing and retail units ...

[lowem]

KT to Eliminate 5,992 Jobs, Reduce 16% of Workforce

KT Corp., South Korea’s largest phone and Internet company, will eliminate 5,992 jobs, or 16 percent of its workforce, to save about 460 billion won ($393 million) a year in labor costs.

[IslandCrow]

Wal-Mart (Sam's Club): 11 200 jobs.

Retail giant Wal-Mart has said that it is cutting 11,200 jobs at its Sam's Club warehouse chain in the US.

The majority of the cuts will hit staff running in-store promotions at the chain, after Wal-Mart decided to outsource these functions.

You have got to love the spin put on this:

Sam's chief executive Brian Cornell said the move to outsource promotions was "not a cost cutting measure. It's really an investment in enhancing our demo programme."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8478384.stm

[eXpat]

There it is the recovery...
Global unemployment hits highest levels on record, warns UN labour agency

27 January 2010 – The mounting number of jobless people around the world has climbed to an historic high with nearly 212 million unemployed last year – or 6.6 per cent of the global workforce – and the situation in Europe is likely to worsen before it gets better, according to a new United Nations report.

In its annual Global Employment Trends report the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that 34 million more people joined the ranks of the unemployed in 2008 and 2009, pushing the total number of out-of-work adults to a record high.

The report painted a gloomy assessment for the labour market this year, predicting that unemployment figures will remain high through 2010 with an additional 3 million people losing their jobs in the European Union (EU) and other developed economies, while unemployment stabilizes or declines only slightly in other regions.

“We need the same policy decisiveness that saved banks now applied to save and create jobs and livelihoods of people,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia, ahead of the annual World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

“This can be done through strong convergence of public policies and private investment,” said Mr. Somavia, stressing that each year “the global labour market has expanded by 45 million people. Therefore recovery measures must target job creation for young men and women entering the labour market for the first time.”

The ILO report said that despite coordinated stimulus measures worldwide that helped avert a far greater social and economic catastrophe, the number of unemployed youth increased by more than 10 million in the last two years – the largest hike since 1991 – and millions of women and men are still without a job, unemployment benefits or any viable form of social protection.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33593&Cr=international+labour+organization&Cr1=

[Tanada]

They were celebrating on the news earlier today, after the worst February house sales ever recorded March was way up. Guess that is supposed to imply we can all run out and get jobs in Construction or something, but you sure don't see any good signs here in Michigan yet.

[Cyrus]

Drugmaker Pfizer has said it is to cut 6,000 jobs worldwide - almost a fifth of its workforce - over the next five years as part of a major restructuring.

It will close eight plants and scale back operations at six other factories. The changes follow Pfizer's purchase of rival Wyeth last year.

Three plants will be closed in the Irish Republic, leading to the loss of up to 785 jobs there.

Two Pfizer plants in County Cork will close and a factory in south Dublin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10122544.stm

[efarmer]

Even Viagra has come up against some very stiff competition. Many of the patents
are expiring now and this changes the picture greatly.

[Timo]

Even Viagra has come up against some very stiff competition.

That just has to be a joke! Anything combining "Viagra" and "stiff" in the same sentence can't be taken too seriously. Although, it is a pretty clever use of words to make your point. Very punny!

[Sixstrings]

A grim fact of the recession is that it pays to lay people off.

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.

CEOs of the 50 U.S. firms that slashed the most jobs between November 2008 and April 2010 took in 42 percent more than the average CEO at an S&P 500 firm, according to the 17th annual Executive Excess study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington think tank.

The study (PDF) also found that 36 of the 50 layoff leaders "announced their mass layoffs at a time of positive earnings reports," suggesting a trend of "squeezing workers to boost profits and maintain high CEO pay."

The 10 "highest-paid CEO layoff leaders" ranked in the report include the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Mark Hurd, who earned $24.2 million in 2009 as the company laid off 6,400 workers and Walmart CEO Michael Duke, who earned $19.2 million as the company laid off 13,350 workers. No Wall Street banks were included in this list, but three banks -- Citigroup, Bank Of America and JP Morgan -- showed up on the study's list of the 50 firms that laid off the most employees.

Overall, the study found that executive pay remains astronomically high compared to previous decades. "After adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century," the study says. Currently, CEOs of major U.S. companies average 263 times the average compensation of American workers, the study claims.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/01/ceo-pay-layoffs_n_701908.html

Gee, what a coincidence -- there's a direct correlation between the most astronomically high CEO pay and who lays the most people off.

[Pretorian]

Well why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing, just like their colleagues in the governmental sector. And the bigger the company the more human ballast they have. So obviously the company will perform better once they are gone, hence bonuses.

[efarmer]

Tough economic times are opportune to cut human ballast and to also steal human plums.
The shock wave from a ballast cut is usually accompanied by a kiss to each of the plums that remain.

[Sixstrings]

Well why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing..

Well, you'd just think that if the company has to cut back and make personnel sacrifices then maybe the CEO who's gettin 400 times the workers' pay should make a sacrifice too?

Yeah yeah I know, I'm being naive again.

[Ludi]

maybe the CEO who's gettin 400 times the workers' pay should make a sacrifice too?

But he works 400 times harder than any other employee! Didn't you know?

How can he stand to take a pay cut when he's working so hard????

[Pretorian]

Well why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing..

Well, you'd just think that if the company has to cut back and make personnel sacrifices then maybe the CEO who's gettin 400 times the workers' pay should make a sacrifice too?

Yeah yeah I know, I'm being naive again.

You mean, out of solidarity? Things like that are done for publicity reasons when there are major paycuts throughout the company. But if there are no paycuts why care? So a fired guy will feel better by having his ex-CEO having 1 million less of an income?

[Pretorian]

maybe the CEO who's gettin 400 times the workers' pay should make a sacrifice too?

But he works 400 times harder than any other employee! Didn't you know?

How can he stand to take a pay cut when he's working so hard????

he doesnt but it is probably well over 400 times as difficult to get a job like that. Jobs that are hard to get tend to be good ones.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Well why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing, just like their colleagues in the governmental sector. And the bigger the company the more human ballast they have. So obviously the company will perform better once they are gone, hence bonuses.

That's how it SHOULD work. Lately that relationship seems sadly random for CEO's. Example: huge golden parachutes for being fired when the company performs badly and the stock tanks. (Big reward for success -- downside should be big risk for failure and they should get NO bonus OR salary when they royally screw up, IMO).

Also, I suspect some of this is that companies that want to lay off a lot of folks may hire a "hit man" CEO to take all the blame (credit), and get paid a huge salary/bonus for doing the dirty work.

IBM's Louis Gerstner comes to mind. As an IBMer, overall, I didn't have too big a problem with that, as during Gerstner's tenure, at least (generally) the least productive folks were those tending to get cut. (After that they just started cutting everywhere by quotas, even folks who were performaning well in areas with too much work). He was essentially ending a long period of corporate culture, where IBM would just carry under/non performers in the name of "respect for the individual".

What really fried my gizzard was when he left IBM, Gerstner then wrote a book where he took ALL the credit for IBM's progress during his tenure. Yes, the 300,000+ folks building software/machines (often working every night/weekend for no extra pay) had NOTHING to do with that -- it was all Gerstner. He should have just kept his big bonus and kept his egotistical trap shut, IMO.

edit - finger check in egotistical.

[jbrovont]

There's a concise, way to express why this doesn't sit well with many people.

A main pillar of leadership is "Never ask anyone else to do that which you are unwilling to do yourself." If you won't take a pay cut to protect the health of your common venture (your company) don't ask anyone else to, or no one will respect you. Simple human nature - it's the same reason you don't see a fat, out of shape drill instructor running a squad of rangers on a 20 mile hike from a golf cart: action is proof of desire for humans. If a CEO is content to sit at the top lapping up a paycheck, so shall all their employees report to work simply to punch the clock and do the least they can. Work hard to create value to close a budget gap, and you can expect the people who work for you to do the same. Exploit your position in your environment to extract the most wealth for yourself with disregard for the welfare of the people you're charged with, and, well, you get the idea.

[Pretorian]

Well why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing, just like their colleagues in the governmental sector. And the bigger the company the more human ballast they have. So obviously the company will perform better once they are gone, hence bonuses.

That's how it SHOULD work. Lately that relationship seems sadly random for CEO's. Example: huge golden parachutes for being fired when the company performs badly and the stock tanks. (Big reward for success -- downside should be big risk for failure and they should get NO bonus OR salary when they royally screw up, IMO).

i agree. why this is not enforced by stockholders is beyond me

[Vogelzang]

Vote Republican, lower unemployment and solve the energy crisis.