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

[lowem]

Johnson & Johnson to cut more than 7,000 jobs worldwide

Johnson & Johnson, a leading US health care products company, said on Tuesday it will slash between six and seven percent of its global workforce, more than 7,000 jobs, to cut costs ... J&J, which makes drugs, consumer products and medical devices, has about 117,000 employees worldwide, which would bring the number of jobs to be eliminated to a range of 7,000 and 8,200.

And they say that these are "defensive" companies.
Looks to me like defensive companies now have to defend their defensive reputation.

[lowem]

EA posts 2Q loss, cutting 17 pct. of work force

Electronic Arts plans to cut its work force by 17 percent as it tries to align its business with a transforming video game industry ... the company announced the layoffs of 1,500 people just hours after it said it is paying at least $275 million to buy Playfish Inc., a maker of social online games popular on Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone ... the cuts are in addition to the 1,100 jobs the company already slashed this year as part of a restructuring plan to shift focus to hit games.

[lowem]

Lloyds announces 5,000 job cuts

Lloyds Banking Group has announced 5,000 job cuts as the government-backed bank moves to integrate its wide-ranging businesses ... the job cuts come as a result of the integration of HBOS, which Lloyds bought at the height of the financial crisis ... the job cuts come just days after Royal Bank of Scotland, which was also bailed out by the government, and HSBC unveiled thousands of job losses.

[lowem]

Adobe cutting 680 jobs

Adobe Systems, known for its Photoshop editing program and Acrobat document software, announced on Tuesday it was cutting some 680 jobs worldwide, about nine percent of its workforce ... Adobe, which employed 7,564 people worldwide at the end of August, also produces the Flash and Shockwave software used in many games and Internet applications.

[lowem]

AOL lays off 100 employees ahead of spinoff

Internet company AOL LLC, which will soon be spun off from parent Time Warner Inc., laid off about 100 full-time employees Tuesday ... the company will have about 6,900 employees after the job cuts.

[lowem]

Al Gore's Current TV lays off 80 employees

Current TV, the cable channel founded by former Vice President Al Gore, laid off about 20 percent of its work force Wednesday as part of an overhaul of its programing model. The cuts affect 80 people, mostly at the channel's Los Angeles-based production and programing facilities ... in April, Current canceled its $100 million IPO, citing unfavorable market conditions.

[Ferretlover]

AOL changed its "mind:"

AOL to lay off a third of staff 2,300 cuts to come after Time Warner spins off Internet company Dec. 9

link

[lowem]

Yep, here's another one, though the numbers don't quite seem to tally :

AOL: We need to fire 2,500 'volunteers'

AOL, which has already told investors that it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told its employees. It is looking for "up to 2,500 volunteers," CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff Thursday. That's a third of the company's payroll. The voluntary layoff program begins December 4, a few days before the company spins off from Time Warner. If AOL doesn't get enough volunteers, it will ax people on its own.

[lowem]

Nokia to axe 330 jobs in Finland, Denmark

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said on Friday it would shed about 330 jobs in Finland and Denmark as part of a streamlining of its research and development operations ... the mobile phone giant launched a cost-cutting programme last January, after its earnings fell as consumers cut back on buying handsets amid the global financial crisis ... before Friday, Nokia had announced about 3,700 job reductions since January, including around 1,300 voluntary redundancy packages.

[Jester]

I am so glad the economic recovery is here...

Rogers to lay off around 900 people. Canada

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009 ... yoffs.html


And

Talisman energy to cut 15% of workforce (around 220 people) canada

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Tali ... story.html

[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.