Timesizing® Associates - HOMEPAGE

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Downsizings, Nov. 16-30, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

11/30/2001  7 downsizings, totaling 1,007 lost jobs + unspecified, reported in NYT & BG -

1. With demand waning, Broadwing to eliminate 900 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The parent of Cincinnatti Bell will eliminate...15% of its work force to lower expenses amid waning demand for telecom services.... The company will close its construction business, which built fiber optic networks for other carriers, and close six offices..\.. The jobcuts, along with office closings and a write-down of assets, will result in Q4 costs of $250-300m.... Broadwing also [will] combine its 11 website operating centers into 3 offices, in Cincinnatti, Austin, and Delaware....

2. Federated Department Stores to cut 100 jobs from Internet operations, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...[and] reorganize its Bloomingdale's and Macy's Internet operations.... Those jobs include tech support, programming, merchandising and administrative staff. Federated plans to change the Bloomingdale's website from an online e-commerce site to one that will focus on marketing support for the Bloomingdale's store brand....

3. Papers lay off, by D.C. Dennison, BG, E5.
   Amid a downturn in newspaper advertising, the Patriot Ledger of Quincy MA...fired two news editors, three reporters and a photo technician..\..according to workers in the newsrooms....
   [For a total of 5 jobcuts.]

4. Papers lay off, by D.C. Dennison, BG, E5.
   Amid a downturn in newspaper advertising...the Enterprise of Brockton MA laid off...two reporters..\..according to workers in the newsrooms....

5. Etc. - Infinite Group Inc., Globe staff and wire services, BG, E5.
   ...of Warwick RI ...ceased the operations of its Osley & Whitney Inc. unit because of continuing losses for several quarters....
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

6. Advertising, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C5.
   ...The online edition...of the trade publication...Advertising Age reported layoffs at Cliff Freeman & Partners in New York....
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

7. Advertising, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C5.
   ...The online edition...of the trade publication...Adweek reported layoffs at the offices of the MindShare media agency, owned by WPP.
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

1. IBM will cut nearly 1,200 jobs, AP via BG, C4.
   Facing a stubborn slowdown in the microprocessor industry, IBM Corp. [will] cut about 1,000 jobs from its seven US chip manufacturing and development plants and another 180 jobs at a storage technology plant in [Rochester,] Minnesota.... IBM employs about 320,000 people worldwide..\..
   [1200 is 0.375% of 320,000.]
   Armonk, NY-based IBM [aims] to reduce the size of its Microelectronics Division by 4.7% [1,010] to about 20,500 employees, from 21,500....
   
   1. The largest share of the cuts will occur at IBM's manufacturing plant in Burlington, Vt., where 500 employees, roughly 6% of the plant's 8,300 workers, will be laid off....
      
   2. In Endicott, NY, where IBM packages chips and manufactures circuit boards, 400 designers, technicians, engineers and managers will lose jobs, said Todd Martin, spokesman at the Endicott plant, which employs 5,500.
      
   3. IBM's chip-making plant in East Fishkill NY will also lose workers,
   4. as will design and development labs in Raleigh NC,
   5. Rochester MN,
   6. Fremont CA,
   7. and Boulder CO....
   Although layoff notices have been sent to more than 1,000 employees, IBM expects some to find employment elsewhere inside the company....
   [What a barbaric practice mass layoffs are. And what a disgrace that a big company like IBM resorts to them, when a much smaller company like Lincoln Electric (2700 employees) has figured out a way to avoid them for the last 42 years. As long as big old companies like IBM are too near-sighted to avoid inducing downturn with mass layoffs, we will continue turning down and do it ever more frequently and deeply. In this case, IBM could have experimented with Timesizing on any one of three levels.
   1. It could cut its corporate worldwide workweek by a negligible 0.375% over its entire global workforce of 320,000 and do a little retraining and job reassignment.
   2. It could cut its Microelectronics Division workweek by 4.7% over that division's 21,500 employees and do more and more focused retraining and job reassignment.
   3. Or it could cut the plant-specific workweeks at each of these 7 individual plants and do plant-specific retraining and job reassignment.]

2. Troubled Palm Inc. to cut 250 workers, Bloomberg via BG, C6.
   ...The biggest maker of handheld computers plans to fire...18% of its employees in the money-losing firm's 3rd round of job cuts this year. ...Santa Clara, Calif.-based...Palm's job cuts will reduce the work force to 1,125.... The company also reduced its staff in March [3/28 #5] and June [6/02 #3], resulting in more than 500 jobcuts.
   [Seems Palm is partial to cuts of 250 at a time cuz this is the 3rd time it's done one this year. And we only counted 50 of the 2nd round so we must now count 250+200= 450 jobcuts.]

3. Reuters Group will close financial TV service and cut 45 jobs...to reduce costs, Bloomberg via NYT, C5.
   LONDON - ...The provider of financial information['s] service, begun seven years ago, will close at the end of May.... The 45 job losses, out of a total of about 100 at the division, will be worldwide.... The shutdown is part of a plan to cut 1,600 jobs and save £220m in costs annually by the end of 2003.
   [Hmph, we were only told about 1340 of these planned 1600 jobcuts back on 7/25 #3, so never mind the 45 cuts included in these figures, we must now count 1600-1340= 260 jobcuts.]

4. MassMutual Life Insurance layoffs, AP via BG, C9.
   ...The [Springfield MA-based] insurer \will\ lay off 112 information services workers tomorrow [as] a cost-saving measure. The company said last week it expects a $1.14B dividend payout to policyholders in 2002, the highest in company history.
   [It can afford its highest divident payout to policyholders in company history and it's still so obsessed with cost saving that it's laying off 112 employees?! This kind of company sure knows how to demoralize its own people and add to the general economic downturn completely unnecessarily. It will be lucky now to avoid decreased employee productivity and increased pilferage or even sabotage.]

5. Etc. - Video Network Communications Inc., Globe staff and wire services, BG, C9.
   ...of Portsmouth, NH, intends to lay off 30% of its employees and implement a 10% salary reduction for all remaining employees, according to a filing with the SEC. Video Network, which had 55 employees last year and posted $8.8m in sales in 2000, expects to save about $400k/Q with the moves.
   [30% of 55 is 16.5, say 17 jobcuts.]

6. Time Inc. said to have plans to close 3 small magazines, by Fabrikant & Kuczynski, NYT, C5.
   Faced with a slowdown in advertiser spending, AOL Time Warner plans to close three of its smaller magazines -
   1. Asiaweek,
   2. Family Life
   3. and On, which was formerly Time Digital....
   Of the three, the closing of Asiaweek, which the company has owned since 1985, is most significant because [it] represented AOL Time Warner's global ambitions....
   [Unspecified lost jobs.]

1. Britain: Cuts at military contractor, by Alan Cowell, NYT, W1.
   ...BAE Systems [will] end production of regional jetliners and cut more than 1,650 jobs because of falling demand for new aircraft after 9/11....

2. Ames Department Stores to close a distribution center, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...A discount retailer with annual sales of more than $3B..\..which is reorganizing under bankruptcy protection \will\ close its Columbus, Ohio, distribution site in a step that affects about 450 employees.... Earlier this month..\..the company, based in Rocky Hill, Conn...said it would close 16 stores in early 2002.

3. Kennecott Utah Copper will lay off 9% of its employees, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...180 people...by January as low prices and international competition continue to hurt the company's finances. The cuts are in addition to 235 layoffs in June.
   [Well this is the first anyone's mentioned of those, so we get to count 180+235= a total of 415 jobcuts now. And if 180 people are 9%, 415 are 21% of the total workforce.]
   By January, the company will have about 1,800 employees. Kennecott also said it planned to close one of two ore processing plants near the mine.
   [What mine? Bad editing!]

4. 8.5% of work force to be cut at San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters via NYT, C6.
   ...220 employees.... The Chronicle's publisher, John Oppedahl, said the jobcuts at the paper, which is owned by the Hearst Corp., would be made through some voluntary buyouts and an estimated 100 layoffs of management staff and union employees. "Chronicle ad revenue for this year has dropped dramatically, with total ad revenue down 20%," Mr. Oppedahl wrote in a memo to employees. "The need to reduce our workforce was one we hoped to avoid...."
   [So just vary your workweek with ad revenue and keep everyone on board.]

1. Japan: More cuts at Isuzu Motors, by Ken Belson, NYT, W1.
   ...The Japanese automaker (GM owns 49%) lost $193m in the halfyear that [ended] Sept. 30 (H1). Isuzu's sales fell 6.5% in H1 as it struggled to compete with Toyota and Honda.... To compensate, Isuzu will eliminate an additional 3,300 jobs....
   [..."additional" to 9700 cut on 5/30/2001 #1].

2. Baxter International closes two plants, Bloomberg via NYT, C9.
   ...A leading maker of treatments for blood diseases [has] shut down two plants that made a blood filter possibly linked to the deaths of more than 50 kidney patients worldwide. The company, which is based in Deerfield IL, closed plants in Ronneby, Sweden and Miami Lakes, Fla. The closings cost 158 people in Sweden and 98 in Florida their jobs.... A small team of employees will remain at both plants to assist with the investigation. Baxter employs about 42,000....
   [So, we have a total or 158+98= 256 lost jobs, or 256/42000x100%= 0.6% of the total workforce.]

3. Russian court dissolves last of independent TV, by Daniel Williams, Washington Post via BG, A6.
   A Moscow court ordered the dissolution of TV-6, the last major independent television station in Russia, a decision that could wipe out the only broadcast voice consistently willing to air criticism of Pres. Vladimir Putin's government.... Although the court ruled on narrow economic grounds - the station is in debt -
   [Oh no-o-o! Not in...DEBT?!!]
   - TV-6 employees said they suspected political maneuvering....
   [Unspecified lost jobs.]

• Mass voicemailing seeks volunteers to leave jobs, by Andrew Zipern, NYT, C4.
  Last week thousands of staff members of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, one of Europe's largest computer services firms, received a rather unusual voicemail message from a top executive, inviting them to quit, take early retirement or a leave of absence by the end of the year.
  [Here's another of these strategies that involve totally indiscriminate skill loss. What can these CEOs be thinking?]
  Citing worsening economic conditions, Maurice Abell, CEO of Cap Gemini's British operations, informed 9,000 employees on the prerecorded message that 750 jobs, or 8% of the company's workforce in the region, must be cut. If enough workers do not voluntarily step down by January, the company will begin layoffs. The message was repeated in e-mail form shortly after. The company also said that its most highly paid workers, some of whom make over $500,000, would see their salaries reduced "in line with market rates."
  [And does that include Abell??]
  Like other technology consultants, Cap Gemini has fallen on hard times. It has announced plans to cut 3,500 jobs this year alone....
  [A previous 2700 cuts occurred on 6/27 #1. We'll assume the 3500 is a rounding upward of 2700+750= 3450 and make no further adjustment. 'Legius difficilior potest' = the more difficult version (3450) prevails.]
  Michelle Perkins, a spokeswoman for the company, said the mass notifications were necessary given the size and geographic dispersion of the company "to ensure that our people heard it first from the company and not from the press.... This is in keeping with the way Maurice frequently communicates with employees and in line with how our people expect and want to communicated to."

1. The Netherlands: More job cuts, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C2.
   Faced with crippling debt [probably from some stupid takeovers], Royal KPN, the largest phone company in the Netherlands, [will] cut 1,300 more jobs over the next three years to trim its workforce by a total of 9,300, or about 20%. ...Debt of about $20B [was] incurred in acquisitions [ayep!] and the purchase of wireless licenses....
   [We noted 4800 of these jobcuts on 10/26 but only from Reuters in our 'not counting' section.]

2. Facing decreased demand for coins, Mint starts layoffs, AP via NYT, A9.
   ...The softening economy has sharply reduced demand for new coins.... "When people are spending less money, there's less transactions out there," the spokesman, Michael White, said..\..
   [Now there's a solid gauge of "the more concentration, the less circulation"!]
   The U.S. Mint...officials say they will make only 15B new pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters next year, instead of the 23B they had planned just last summer.
   [So, by the 'coin demand index', the U.S. economy has gone down (23-15)/23= 35%!]
   As a result...the Mint has begun laying off 357 workers nationwide, including at major coin-production plants in Philadelphia and Denver..., 12% of its 2,861 employees. Coins for eastern states are made in Philadelphia; coins for the west are made in Denver..\.. James Benfield, executive director of the Coin Coalition, a Washington lobbying group that supports the dollar coin...speculate[s] that the glut is being compounded by the return of many coins to circulation after months or years on dresser tops and in shoe boxes....

• Alitalia will eliminate jobs and sell units, Bloomberg via NYT, C5.
  ...Italy's national airline [will] eliminate 3,400 jobs, or 14% of its workforce, and sell three units employing an additional 1,000 workers as it seeks to return to profitability by 2003.... Alitalia, which is still government-controlled, will dismiss 2,500 people and encourage 900 others to take early retirement. At the end of 2000, the company employed 24,478 people. Alitalia...might rehire as many as 1,000 by 2003 if business picks up....
  [OK here's how we're gonna make sense of this, the question being, is this 3400 jobcuts over and above the 2500 (11%) on 9/26 #1 or are they included? We're going to assume that Alitalia is using as its base figure not the full 24,478 of 12/31/200 but that minus the 1000 it's alienating when it sells the three units. So our base total-workforce figure is going to be 24478-1000= 23,478. Then 2500 is indeed 11% of that (10.6% rounded upward) and 3400 is indeed 14% of that (14.4% rounded downward). This answers the question. The 2500 are indeed included in this 3400 figure so we only get to count 3400-2500= 900 lost jobs here, presumably the 900 they're "encouraging" to take early retirement (tho' usually only ¼-½ of the hoped-for takers actually take the offer). And what percentage is 900 of its immediately prior total? Well, 23,478-2500= 20,978, and 900 is 4.3% of 20,478.]

1. Verizon Communications offering buyouts to union workers, Bloomberg via NYT, C5.
   ...a significant number of its 130,000 union employees in the last week to cut costs after profit dropped..\.. The telephone service provider...has 256,000 employees. Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Communications Workers of America, which represents 88,000 employees, said Verizon wanted to trim 8,000 union jobs before the year ends. Verizon has eliminated 7,500 jobs [so far] this year, mainly through attrition, and the equivalent of 14,000 positions by reducing overtime and shedding contractors, a company spokesman, Peter Thonis, said.
   [OOOkay, let's clean up this mess. Almost all these figures are mutually incommensurate. All we can really conclude is that 7500+14000= 21,500 position-equivalents have been eliminated so far this year. All we've counted so far is 10,000 on 2/08 #1 and 350 on 2/22 #2 (there's a harmonic reference!), and those 350 should probably have been assumed to be part of the 10,000 and finessed. However, we did count'em, so our total counted is 10,350. So today we get to count the rest of the 21,500, meaning 21500-10350= 11,150 lost jobs. Let's simplify this to two downsizings, and assume that the 256k total number of employees applied in between them. So we'll deduct the current lopped-head count of 11,150 from the 256,000-employee figure and say, until corrected, that this 11,150 represents lost jobs numbering 4.4% of the total, which now comes down to 256000-11150= 244,850 total remaining workforce as of our current squishy figures. We'll just have to wait for specifics on how many union workers take the buyouts and how many of those 8000 union jobs that Verizon supposedly wants to trim it actually does trim, and even then we can't count'em unless we know they don't overlap with these other big figures. Before moving on, we gotta give Verizon credit for doing some primitive timesizing here in terms of cutting overtime.]

2. Eastman Kodak to shut its PictureVision unit, Bloomberg via BG, B11.
   ...which operates AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Internet-based "You've Got Pictures" service, to reduce costs. PictureVision, based in Dulles, Va., employs 128 people in the United States and Israel. Most will be fired, said Anthony Sanzio, a Kodak spokesman.... Rochester, NY-based Kodak \is\ the largest photography company....

3. Goldman Sachs Group firings, Bloomberg via BG, B2.
   ...The number one stock underwriter and mergers adviser [bad, Goldman, bad!] fired about 15 equity traders, people familiar with the situation said. The firm last week fired 50 employees in its research department.... It employed 22,627 people last year.
   [Well, goodness, nobody picked up those 50 casualties last week so we gotta count'em now: 15+50 gives us a total of 65 jobcuts.]

1. Japan: Auto parts maker plans cuts, AP-NY-11-20-01 1415EST via AOLNews.
   Hurt by rising costs and falling demand, NSK Ltd., an auto parts maker, will close or sell four [of its nine] factories in Europe and one in Japan.... The company, which expects to lose $61m this fiscal year, will cut 2,500 jobs in the next 18 months..\.. Six of NSK's nine European factories are in Britain....
   [So Ol' Blighty is going take at least one of NSK's 4 Euro hits.]

2. Softbank of Japan marks down portfolio, by Ken Belson, NYT, W1.
   TOKYO...- The once high-flying Internet conglomerate Softbank said today that it had marked down the value of its sprawling portfolio of major investments in other Internet companies by nearly $414m....
   [And 4 is a bad omened number for the Japanese, since it overlaps with a word for death. Too bad. It's good for American indians - the four directions... - and we like it cuz of all English's great "four-letter words" starting with the vague "love" and "luck" and moving on to the solider positives of Eros....]
   To cut costs, the company will shut 8 of 11 overseas offices, lay off 75 people and sell private equity stakes in about 20 Japanese companies....

1. Alcoa plans to lay off 6,500 and close plants, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   The aluminum maker...plans to lay off...at 40 sites in the Americas and Europe, or 4.6% of its workforce...to reduce costs.... Alcoa, based in Pittsburgh, has 140,000 employees..\.. The company forecast Q4 expenses of as much as $250m for severance packages and plant closings, which are expected to be completed by the end of next year.... Earnings fell 7.9% in Q3 as sales dropped 13%..\.. The CEO, Alain Belda...wants to reduce Alcoa's expenses by $1B a year by the end of 2004....
   [No mention of losses. Apparently the company is still in profit. And you know what we say about companies in profit that start downsizing for a Procrustean "efficiency" instead of timesizing for true efficiency - they're cutting their own and their customers' best customers, and inducing or spurring downturn. Belda beckons bedlam with his blind boobery.]

2. ChevronTexaco sets 500 more job cuts , Bloomberg via NYT, C6.
   ...The 2nd-largest U.S. oil company [will] increase the number of jobcuts its plans by 500, to 4,500, as part of a plan to save $1.8B annually by March 2003. The company, formed last month by Chevron's $45.8B buyout of Texaco, had planned to trim its workforce by 4,000 employees, or 7% [news to us - ed.], to 53,000.... It will employ about 52,500 after the reductions....
   The biggest publicly-traded oil company [is] Exxon Mobil....

3. Simon firings, Dow Jones via BG, D10.
   In the wake of a scam involving promotional games for McDonald's Corp., Gloucester MA-based Simon Worldwide Inc. said its viability as a going concern is in doubt. It plans to cut 215 more employees from its workforce....
   [In the future, companies in trouble will gradually cut hours (and prorate pay) for everyone, experience accelerated natural attrition at the employee's call, and cut jobs only immediately before Chapter 7 liquidation. This will flatten the sine wave of the business "cycle" considerably by preserving consumer demand and slowing-to-a-crawl the descending movement of any downturn. We say "cycle" in quotes because recoveries are always caused by phenomena outside business and economics, usually real or imagined military threats. Of course, you can then turn around and say, with Marx, that all military threats are based on economics, but if "failure to share" is really so inherent to economics, how come there arises such astronomical concentration of income and wealth that there are downturns and a business "cycle" in the first place? We regard sharing and sharing "technologies" as pre-economic=- more basic than the quantification-obsessed economic worldview, and so we disagree with Marx and regard many wars as originating outside economics, though his point is valid in the superficial sense that they can still largely be translated into mathematics as a second language. In fact, every social-science era contributed to human "sharing technologies," from language to the political skills of bipartisanship and loyal opposition. Now we need to take our sharing technology right into economics and implement a flexible and market-oriented skill&employment-sharing technology such as Timesizing.]

   • Hard times hit the Guggenheim, pointer summary (to E1), NYT, A2.
   [Or maybe we can get it completely rhyming with "A haaard time / hits the Guggennn-heim" (needs creative-artistic scansion). We counted this downsizing per se but not the specific number of layoffs involved (cuz they were previously undetermined) back on 11/09 #7.]
   Admissions are down by almost 60% and revenue is running about half of what it is suposed to be at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. As of Friday 80 employees - roughly one-fifth of the staff - had been given pink slips in what the museum's director described as the initial round of layoffs.
   [Ohoh. At least they're reviving the language of "pink slips" - so gentle, so courteous, so Japanese as you get subjected to toko.]

4. Net incubator to close, by Andrew Zipern, NYT, C7.
   12 Entrepreneuring...based in San Francisco..\..will shut down as soon as January and return the money that it has not invested [137-33= $104m] to its financial backers....
   [We never understood what Dad told us about the Great Depression not being a result of there being no money. All the money was there, he said, but it wasn't being used. Where was it, we asked. Under people's mattresses, he said. Incomprehensible. But here's a little slice of what he meant. A business incubator "returns the money to its financial backers" unused. Yet our stubborn mother-in-law (and a lot of other people) will still argue that this is impossible, because "concentrated money works just as hard as spread-around money." Oh no, it doesn't, and 12 Entrepreneuring demonstrates how this situation, so incomprehensible to so many usually well-off people, comes about. Mainstream economists should all know this from their own neo-classical doctrine of the "marginal efficiency of (concentrated) capital" - but they don't - or maybe they just downplay it to the point of media silence because - guess who pays their salaries? But truly, "the more concentration, the less circulation."]
   In early November 12 laid off half its staff in a move to cut costs..\..
   [And now presumably, it's laying off the other half, both unspecified (don't be fooled by the 12).]
   The company...raised $137m over the last 18 months [and] invested about $33m in Internet service companies like iBuilding Inc. and Oxygen Software. Such so-called Internet incubators have fallen on hard times with the collapse of the Web economy [dba bubble]. 12 was..\..founded by Halsey Minor, who also founded CNET Networks...and Eric Greenberg, founder of the Net consultant Scient Inc....

1. Layoffs are announced at several agencies - E.g., Foote Cone & Belding, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C13.
   ...laid off 60 to 65 employees at its Chicago office, or about 10% of the 600 people there....

2. Layoffs are announced...- E.g., Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide's NY office, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C13.
   ...laid off about 30 employees, 2.1% of its New York staff....

3. Layoffs are announced...- E.g., Deutsch, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C13.
   ...eliminated about 25 jobs, affecting about 3% of the staff of 900 at the agency's offices in Marina del Rey, Calif., and New York. The step, the first such move by the agency, was described as part of a restructuring that would include hiring...staff members with other skills....
   [Maybe they need less restructuring and more retraining.]

4. Layoffs are announced...- E.g., DDB Worldwide's NY office, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C13.
   ...dismissed 20 people, or 6% of its staff of 330....

5. Layoffs are announced...- E.g., J. Walter Thompson's NY office, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C13.
   ...is laying off eight employees, about 1.1% of its staff.

1. 3.9% of Merrill Lynch work force accepts buyouts, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...More than 2,600 employees...took the buyouts offered as part of the efforts of Stanley O'Neal, its president, to trim expenses and improve the profitability at the company. Merrill, with 63,000 employees as of Sept. 30, earned $6,403 per employee in Q3, making it the least profitable of the five biggest Wall Street firms.... Most employees had until Nov. 9 to decide whether to accept the buyout offer. Departures were subject to approval by managers.
   [Indian giving - "Here - oops, not you!" At any rate, they've "achieved" 2600 lost jobs so far.]

2. Bristol-Myers Squibb plans job cuts; sells Clairol, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...about 1,000 jobs, including 350 in NJ, and may announce more reductions as part of a drive to cut costs and eliminate overlapping operations. The cuts were from functions like the corporate staff and global business that recently went through a "redesign process".... Bristol-Myers, the 5th-largest drug maker, employed about 44,000 in its continuing operations as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing....

3. Tellabs, telecommunications concern, plans job cuts, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   The telecommunications-equipment maker [will] cut up to 1,000 jobs, or 13.5% of its work force, and close two facilities in a bid to cut costs amid an industrywide slump. Tellabs, based in Naperville, Ill., [will] reduce its workforce by about 800 employees in the U.S. and about 200 abroad. The company also [will] close a mfg plant in Round Rock, Tex., and an R&D center in Minn. Tellabs has already cut 17% of its workforce [see 8/23 #1 etc.].

4. Kerr-McGee Corp., NYT, C4.
   ...Oklahoma City, an explorer for oil and natural gas, [will] take a $20m Q4 charge to close a [paint-ingredient (titanium dioxide pigment)] plant in Antwerp, Belgium, and eliminate 120 jobs....

5. Red Herring Comunications, NYT, C4.
   ...San Francisco, a provider of news and analysis on innovation in business and investing, reduced its staff by 27%, or 38 workers, most of whom worked in the slumping corporate conferences unit.
   [They don't know much about innovation in business if they're still into staff reduction and clueless about worktime reduction.]

1. Cendant firings, Bloomberg via BG, D2.
   NYC-based...franchiser of Ramada hotels and owner of the Avis rental car business has cut about 6,000 jobs in response to a drop in hotel occupancies and travel, said a person familiar with the situation....

2. Novell to lay off 1,400, by Chris Gaither, NYT, C3.
   ...A maker of networking software...based in Provo, Utah \will\ eliminate 19% of its workforce...in an effort to become profitable again despite the slowing information-technology market. ...The [$55m] restructuring charge [is] largely related [to] its acquisition of the consulting firm, Cambridge Technology Partners. Novell [will] report earnings of 1 cent a share compared with break-even during the year-earlier period....
   [Yet another company downsizing despite profitability, albeit marginal, and again the toxic takeover-downsizing connection.]

3. Kennametal to close 3 plants and eliminate 350 jobs, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...A specialty toolmaker [will] eliminat[e] 2.9% of its 12,000 employees worldwide...because of a continued steep decline in the electronics and industrial distribution business....

4. Yahoo plans layoffs, Reuters via NYT, C3.
   ...[of] about 300 employees or just under 10% as part of a broad restructuring. The company said it would actually cut 400 jobs but it would continue to hire people to build up some business areas.

5. France: Bank's earnings fall, by Kerry Shaw, NYT, W1.
   France's 3rd-largest bank, Societe Generale, posted a 20% decline in Q3 profit from a year earlier.... The bank attributed the drop to declines in the investment banking and asset management sectors.... The bank is trying to cut costs in investment banking, which had a loss of 21m euros even though the company eliminated 300 jobs.
   [We only caught 170 of those so we have now to count the other 130 jobcuts.]

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