Timesizing® Associates

---

Downsizings November 1-15/2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

11/15/2000  2 downsizings reported, totaling 390 lost US jobs + unspecified So. Korean jobs -

1. ShopLink.com joins ranks of failed grocers - Westwood [Ma.] firm shuts suddenly, by Stephanie Stoughton, Boston Globe, E3.
   ...yesterday...after failing to attract additional funding.... The company's workforce will receive severance packages. ShopLink.com employs 390 people, including 220 in the Boston area....
   Following the demises of Streamline.com [see last item yesterday, 11/14 below], Boston-area consumers will be left with only two large Internet grocers: Peapod Inc. and HomeRuns.com.
   [But then, how many do we need?]

2. Daewoo assets frozen, Reuters via NYT, W1.
   ...Production at a second Daewoo plant, in Kunsan, halted for lack of parts, joining the company's main Bupyong plant, idle since last week [see 11/10 below].
   [So, unspecified layoffs.]

1. Merged consulting concern plans big job cut to bolster stock, by Andrew Sorkin, NYT, C6.
   [This has got to be the most common suicide pill that stupid CEOs take - prioritizing stockholders instead of employees and customers.]
   When the Internet consulting firm USWeb/CKS merged with Whittman-Hart to become MarchFirst on that very date this year, who knew that a company promoting the future of business would have been better off stuck in the past?... A class-action suit against the company by "investors" [our italics -ed.], a $436.7m loss in Q3 and a revolving door that employees seem to be using only to leave has not helped the situation either.
   Now the company is hoping to revive its sagging stock price by [destroying morale further (ed.) and] cutting 1,000 jobs, or about 10% of its work force....
   [Good God, if a few employees voluntarily leaving didn't help the stock price, why in the world would a lot of employees help it by being shoved out the door?]
   MarchFirst expects the cuts to save about $100m a year. "We got ahead of ourselves on the hiring cycle," Thomas R. Metz, MarchFirst's president and COO said yesterday....
   [So rebuild morale by cutting hours, not jobs, Moron Metz!]
   The cuts will come across the board, though one executive suggested that the majority of job losses would come from the strategy consulting group.
   [Now Turkey Tom, here's what happens when you downsize -]
   After rescheduling a planned conference call with analysts yesterday to give itself more time to plan the announcement of the job cuts and the repositioning of the company, word spread throughout the ranks that pink slips were in the offing. "People are sequestering themselves inside conference rooms and are calling the headhunters," said a senior executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
   [This dumb company is fried.]
   In an industry that relies heavily on keeping its talented employees, word of the job cuts and continued underperformance may hurt the company's future performance....
   [No-o-o! You figger?]
   ...no matter how well planned the reorganization, analysts said. "It's a vicious circle," said Thatcher Thompson, an analyst at Merrill Lynch who rates the company as "neutral."
   [Neutral, shmootral. This corp. is a corpse .]
   "These kinds of companies are all about momentum," he said. "When you blow up at this size, it's so difficult to regain your footing." MarchFirst is clearly having a hard time rallying support among investors and employees.
   [Well maybe it's time it reversed its priorities and put employees first. If employees are happy, customers are happy, and 'when you buoy them, dough will come.']
   More than a dozen analysts have cut their rating on the stock, and a companywide e-mail message to employees from MarchFirst's chairman and CEO, Robert F. Bernard, has done little to calm nerves.
   [Just listen to the gobbledygook this dodo dumped in his email -]
   "...The most important thing we can all do right now, and that includes myself and the executive team, is to pull together...."
   [Bernard you idiot, firing 10% of your staff is NOT "pulling together"! Cutting 10% of the working hours and payroll for everyone, including yourself, to save the $100m/yr is "pulling together," but your brain is too stupid and conventional to ever get such a refreshing and unifying idea. And lying doesn't help -]
   ..\.."Let me start by saying our business is sound...."
   [Yeah sure. Here's what one of your senior executives acknowledged -]
   "It's a total disaster. This is just the beginning."
   [Man the lifeboats and let this old fool go down with the ship! Just look at the stupidity in the background -]
   ...Some employees and investors suggested that the company's strategy consulting business had been cannibalized when part of the staff left the firm to create a new firm that was effectively supported by MarchFirst.
   [Hooboy.]
   Others suggested the company's earnings projections were just plain wrong.
   [Wrong as in overblown, mayhap?]
   In their class-action lawsuit, investors assert: "The company and certain of its officers and directors violated the federal securities laws by providing materially false and misleading information about the company's business and financial condition...."
   [Not that you investors weren't egging them on, or anything, desperately scanning for new technology to throw your megabucks into - anything but into training, hiring and reinvestment in your own investments' markets.]
   ...Analysts said MarchFirst should not be singled out as the only company having problems. "The whole space has been whacked," Mr. Thompson said. "There just isn't anyone that held up well."
   ["We're forever blow-ing bub-bles, pret-ty bubbles in - the - air...." You can't build a stable stock market on an unstable job market. You can't base secure stock prices on job insecurity.]

2. CMGI to close iCast, 1stUp - Unless buyers emerge, 310 to lose jobs, $90m in charges expected, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, C1.
   [We don't think there'll be any buyers - you'd have to be nuts to buy an Internet company today - and the NYT version today is titled simply "CMGI closing 2 units as revenue falls short," C19.]
   ...Woburn [Ma.]-based iCast employs 150 people there and 60 in other offices. 1stUp, with 100 employees, is based in San Francisco. The moves are part of attempts by CMGI to become profitable after a steep drop in its share price this year....
   [Again we ask, whyever did its stock price go up if it's never been profitable?]

3. Netpliance making big changes, by Catherine Greenman, NYT, C4.
   ...A leading maker of inexpensive Internet terminals for consumers [is] cutting its workforce and changing its business focus to market its Internet technologies to broadband service providers. The company is laying off 93 [37%] of its 249 employees....

4. Del Monte Foods Co., NY, C4.
   ...San Francisco, the largest producer of canned fruits and vegetables in the United States, [will] close its tomato-processing plant in Woodland, Calif., in Jan. 2001 to cut costs. Del Monte will dismiss or relocate 46 full-time workers when the plant closes.
   [We'll take that as a dismissal, since the jobs in Woodland are still history.]

5. Streamline.com delivery service fails, by Judith Berck, NYT, C4.
   An Internet company...based in Westwood, Mass..\..with large operations in northern New Jersey and Boston...is calling it quits. The company, which aimed its Web-based grocery and home delivery services at busy suburban families, was founded in 1993 and went public last year. In a last-ditch effort to stay solvent, the company...had sold off operations in Chicago and Washington.
   [Unspecified lost jobs.]

• Discovery to lay off half its dot-com staff - Washington Post, Reuters via AOLNews 00:31 11-11-00 via RadioTony 11 Nov 2000 00:59:00 EST.
  WASHINGTON...- Discovery Communications Inc., which runs the nature and science cable network Discovery Channel, plans to lay off almost half of its 200 Internet unit employees on Monday, the Washington Post...reported Saturday [11/11].
  [So let's peg it at 99 jobcuts, since this is as specific as they get.]
  The planned layoffs at Discovery.com come days after the parent company broke ground on a new headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. a suburb outside Washington, DC..\.. The company...has been dealing with tight budget commitments in the past several months....
  [More likely weak CEO commitment.]

1. [Industry-level - excluded from count -]
   As Silicon Alley's revenues fall, more layoffs are planned, by Jayson Blair [=‘Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception,’ 5/11/2003 NYT, A1], NYT, A16.
   The dot-com shakeout continued to reverb thru NY's Silicon Alley this wk as several companies announced sharp revenue losses.... BigStar Entertainment, an Internet mktg company, said yesterday that its revenues dropped more than 45% in 3Q00, although it did end the period with a narrowing net loss.
   In the last few months, Silicon Alley's dott-com's have laid off more than 3,500 people. Dozens of companies, including the online delivery service Urbanfetch.com, Internet clothing store Boo.com and Urban Box Office Network, have closed or announced large layoffs since the beginning of September....
   Analysts said that recent cutbacks reflect investors' caution about giving money to dot-coms and that companies feel compelled to cut expenses after disappointing Q3 results....

2. [Corporate-level - included in count -]
   As Silicon Valley's revenues fall, more layoffs are planned, by Jayson Blair [=‘Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception,’ 5/11/2003 NYT, A1], NYT, A16.
   ...24/7 Media, an online advertising and technology company, said after the markets closed on Wed. that it had missed analysts' expectations and that it would lay off a little more than 200 employees by year-end....
   [Who cares about analysts' expectations in a real industry when you're still in profit?! 'Course maybe these erstwhile technological optimists aren't in profit.]

1. [Industry-level - excluded from count -]
   Putin cuts forces by 600,000, promising military overhaul, by Michael Wines, NYT, A14.
   [This is presumably on top of the 350,000 cut on 9/9/2000.]
   MOSCOW...- The Kremlin...plans to shrink its 3m-strong armed forces by 600k people, led by deep cuts in the main Defense Ministry forces, to rein in what President Vladimir V. Putin called an unwieldy and extravagant military machine.... The reductions, totaling about one-fifth [20%] of the Russians officially under arms...include a long-expected reduction of the main uniformed defense forces by 365,000 to about 850,000, as well as layoffs of 235,000 civilian and military workers in 11 other armed branches not under the Defense Ministry's control....

2. Ames [Department Stores] to close 32 discount stores early next year, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...in February, mainly locations acquired when Ames bought Hills Stores in 1998. About 2,000 employees will be affected in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, New York and Massachusetts. Employees will be relocated, the company said.
   [Oh yeah? To what understaffed stores? And what then would be the point of the 32 closings? Save on utilities? The Boston Globe version of this story is perhaps clearer - "Ames to shut stores, slash 2,000 jobs," Bloomberg via Boston Globe, D7.]

3. SLI Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Canton, Mass., a maker of lamps and fiber-optic lighting systems, [is] cutting about 313 jobs in Europe and the United States to trim annual costs by about $11.5m. SLI said more cuts were planned.

4. [The toxic takeover-downsizing connection -]
   Unigraphics Solutions, NYT, C4.
   ...St. Louis, a maker of product-design software...laid off more than 100 employees to cut costs after the company's purchase of Engineering Animation, Ames, Iowa, a computer software company, in October.

5. First Union is making cuts at corporate banking unit, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...cutting the unit's staff of bankers by 40%, scrapping its geographically based organization and concentrating on customers in 13 industry groups.
   [And just how many jobcuts would that be...? This numb story doesn't tell us.]
   Similar changes were announced Wednesday to employees in First Union's underwriting and risk management groups.... In its ongoing reorganization, First Union has sold its credit card business and shut its Money Store until this year.
   [Well, leave us bestir ourselves to waste a lot of time phutzing around on the Web trying to find out the actual number of jobcuts here....   Whoa, what a gaff! Here's the underlying wire story -]
   First Union to restructure unit, AP via wire.ap.org, NOV 09, 16:42 EDT.
   Charlotte, NC...- First Union Corp. is restructuring its corporate banking unit in order to boost earnings, eliminating 40 bankers' jobs and reassigning several other employees.... The bank currently has 98 corporate bankers assigned to do business based on certain geographic regions. The group will be cut to 58 employees who will target companies with sales of at least $250m and work in one of 13 industry groups....
   [So it's 40 jobcuts, not 40%. But soft - what percentage of a total workforce of 98 is 40 jobcuts? Aha, 40.8% or 41%! You see, they were wrong, they were wrong!]
   Lower-level corporate banking employees won't know what will happen to them until the end of the month, when First Union should know where the affected bankers will be located and what their new jobs will be.
   [Yeah, makes it sound like First Union is so passive and helpless in all this, like they're not deciding it and causing it all. Happy Xmas, employees! NOW is the time to fax out them resumes! First Union doesn't even respect you enough to tell you what's going on.]
   "We will work as hard as we can to place as many people as we can in active and viable roles in First Union," said Roger Pearce, executive VP of corporate lending....
   [Now thet's reel desent of yer, Roger. But anyone with any self-respec' ain't gonna wait fer yer charity.]

6. Daewoo plant idle, by Samuel Len, NYT, W1.
   Production stopped at the main Daewoo Motor Co. plant outside Seoul [at Bupyong?] after autoparts suppliers stopped delivering parts not paid for in advance. Creditors forced Daewoo Motor into bankruptcy on Wednesday by cutting off the cash keeping the company afloat, after its labor unions rejected demands for jobcuts.
   [So, unspecified Korean jobs lost, probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. This is going to be sooo great for their consumer base - not.]
   The assets of Daewoo Motor were frozen in the bankruptcy.
   [See our bankruptcy stories of 11/09/2000 & the following 2 days.]

1. Lucent [Technologies] to revamp management, cut up to 10,000 jobs, analysts say, AP via Boston Globe, C3.
   ...Murray Hill [NJ]-based..\..telecommunications equipment maker..\..stung by a string of disappointing profits, plans to streamline its upper management, enhance employee incentives and eliminate what analysts say could be as much as...10% of its workforce.
   [So these morons are going to demoralize people with 10,000 layoffs and try to enhance their incentives at the same time?! Ri-i-ight.]
   Bill Price, a spokesman...said yesterday the company has already eliminated 240 finance and human resources jobs this month [first we've heard of it -ed.], but has not determined the total number of cuts companywide. However, he added, "We have no reason to believe it's going to be at that level." He said most of the job losses are expected to come through attrition....
   [Since CEOs today tend to slavishly obey short-sighted analysts anyway, we'll go with the 10,000 figure, and just include the till-now-unreported 240 in it.]

2. ArvinMeritor, maker of truck axles, to trim 1,500 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The largest maker of heavy-truck axles [will] cut about...4% of its workforce, as North American heavy-truck and automobile production slows. ArvinMeritor announced the move yesterday along with a 56% decline in earnings for its fiscal Q4, which ended Sept. 30. The company...now has about 36,500 employees....

3. Access provider announces cutbacks, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   Network Access Solutions...eliminated 145 jobs, or 23% of its workforce, to cut costs. The cuts, along with a sales force revamping, will reduce sales, general and administrative expenses by 40%, it said.

4. Internet Capital [Group] to cut staff, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...An investor in online industrial commerce companies [will] cut 50 jobs, or 35% of its workforce, and write off some assets as it battles investor distaste for Internet investing....

1. [Again, the cancerous takeover-downsizing connection -]
   Tyco [International] to cut jobs at Mallinckrodt, AP via Boston Globe, C9.
   Tyco International Ltd. says about 350 employees in the St. Louis area, including some top managers, are losing their jobs as a result of the company's purchase of Mallinkrodt Inc.... The layoffs would "consolidate several Mallinkrodt HQ functions into the Tyco Healthcare System." Most of the affected employees are being notified this week.... These latest jobcuts are in addition to 140 [cuts] at Mallinkrodt's St. Charles, Mo., plant...in early October. [See our story on 10/04/2000.]

2. Pets.com, Sock Puppet's home, will close, by Reed Abelson via NYT, C4.
   ...[A seller of] pet food and other supplies over the Internet...based in San Francisco [is] laying off about 255 [80%]of its 320 employees and...selling most of its assets, including rights to the puppet. The company will be shutting down its website tomorrow. \It\ was losing money and...unable to raise more cash or to find a buyer....

3. [Another cankerous takeover-downsizing chute -]
   Bond trading system expected to close, Reuters via NYT, C13.
   Tullett & Tokyo Liberty PLC, an interdealer brokerage firm for fixed-income securities, will shut down its LibertyDirect electronic trading system for U.S. Treasury securities by the end of the month. The system, with about $100B in trading volume a month, is an also-ran in a highly competitive and consolidating field. About 50 people were dismissed from the Liberty Treasury trading operation on Friday, including traditional brokers, e-traders at LibertyDirect and support and back-office employees.... Tullett & Tokyo Liberty, founded in 1971, employs more than 2,000 people in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia. It acquired Liberty Brokers at the end of 1999..\..
   The [shutdown] comes at a time when the profit margins for sales and trading of fixed-income securities have been eroded by the rapid consolidation in the bond business that has come after a succession of big bank mergers and as the U.S. Treasury has cut back on issuing debt in an era of government budget surpluses....

4. Port strike sustained, Reuters via NYT, W1.
   Independent truckers trying to unionize maintained picket lines at the port of Montreal in defiance of an emergency provincial law ordering them back to work. A backlog of 13,000 containers has piled up at docks and warehouses since Oct. 23, causing layoffs and spot shortages....
   [...i.e., unspecified.]

5. Royal Ahold NV, NYT, C4.
   ...Zaandam, the Netherlands, an international supermarket retailer, said its Tops Market and Giant-Carlisle supermarket chains, which are based in New York and Pennsylvania, respectively, would combine support services to cut costs.
   [...i.e., unspecified layoffs.]

• Furniture.com calls it quits, by Catherine Greenman, NYT, C6.
  ...Web site [that] resembled a glossy catalog of its upscale home furnishings shut down yesterday and laid off 76 [86%] of its remaining 88 employees. ...It could not obtain enough cash to continue operations, despite reporting $22m in net revenue between Jan. and Sept. this year. In June, Furniture.com received $27m from investors....

• Rolls-Royce is expected to cut 5,000 jobs in reorganization, by Suzanne Kapner, NYT, C12.
  ...The aircraft engine maker is expected to eliminate...nearly one-eighth [12.5%] of its work force over three years..to jump-start profits....
  [Where do these morons get the idea that shrinking their skillset, morale, and their own customers' customers and best marketers (= their own employees) raises profits? Cut prices and boost advertising. Get worktime & payroll for all, especially including top executives, flexing with revenues (= the initial-stage corporate version of Timesizing). Get some feedback coming through to the big buttheads who have been setting the "strategy" in a vacuum.]
  The scale of the jobcuts is 3,000 more than the 2,000 jobs that Rolls-Royce said it planned to trim by the end of next year as part of a...$218m three-year reorganization plan intended to increase efficiency.... Of the 2,000 jobs already scheduled to be eliminated, about half will come from attrition, and the rest will be made overseas..\..
  As part of that process, Rolls-Royce said earlier this month that it would close a parts plant in Derby...and eliminate up to 180 jobs [see 11/03 below]. Rolls-Royce employs about 12,000 people in the Derby area and more job cuts in that region are possible.
  The reorganization comes after a profit warning in August, which caused shares of Rolls-Royce to drop 22% in one day, the largest single-day decline since the stock started trading in 1988....
  [As long as CEOs have their priorities backwards (speculators first, customers second, employees last) and continue to react hysterically to day-by-day stock gymnastics, they will continue to fail and they will pull down their national economy. Southwest Airlines has the priorities right, and it's doing great - see our goodnews story of 11/05. As long as current win-lose capitalism prioritizes stock holders and analysts, it is at odds with long-term ecological considerations and is self-dooming. By putting employees first, the Timesizing program pushes out the corporate planning horizon into the distant future and shifts the economy to win-win capitalism. Here's what Rolls-Royce should be reacting to on a long-term basis -]
  Over the last year, the number of installed Rolls-Royce engines has increased by 1,000, and each engine is expected to generate a steady stream of revenue as parts require replacement.
  [But with a staff cut of 12.5%, their ability to produce and deliver these parts on a tight schedule will be curtailed. That in turn will cut their number of installed engines in the future and it will be "sayonara, Rolls Royce."]

1. Aon, insurance broker, plans broad reorganization, by Joseph Treaster, NYT, C4.
   ...The world's second-largest insurance broker [after Marsh & McLennan] announced flat Q3 revenue and earnings and a sweeping reorganization that will cost up to $325m and eliminate 3,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce.... Aon said that a large part of its [$325m] reorganization costs would go toward severance payments as it trims its global staff of 50,000..\..
   [The stock market is finally starting to get it right -]
   Investors reacted by pushing Aon stock down...18%....
   Aon said the changes, mainly involving improvements in technology, were intended to improve the way the company does business.... The technology changes, it said, will eliminate duplication and speed up service....
   [Now once again we issue the challenge to mainstream economists dba cheerleaders - What was that you were saying about "Technology creates more work than it destroys"??? Not only does efficient technology displace humans out of a fixed amount of urgently demanded employment (doubly misnamed the "lump of labor" "fallacy") but it displaces humans out of a DIMINISHING amount of urgently demanded employment. That is it's whole purpose. Now if humans, increasingly desperate to maintain "face time" at a fixed pre-technology level of 40 hours a week struggle to come up with ever more reluctantly demanded "quality" improvements like hi-fi (that only dogs can hear) vs. lo-fi, CDs instead of vinyl albums (there goes the artwork on the covers and the writeups on the back), hi-res TV instead of lo-res (we watch too much anyway), ORVs and SUVs (gas-guzzling road-ahead-hiding nature-bashers), that is no great argument for the infinitely expanding demand for human employment in the long term. Downsizing happens in the immediate term, Marshall's "market term." Your pie-in-the-sky "long term" to attack the need to share the vanishing employment NOW is irrelevant. You sit back on your fat butts in academe scribbling irrelevant formulae and cheerlead for CEOs who are destroying their consumer base and their own markets day after day, and do nothing but nod and smile.]

2. Alcoa says it is closing refinery in Virgin Islands, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...because of falling demand. The plant, in St. Croix...will close on Jan.31 and all but a handful of its 350 employees will be laid off.... Shares...fell....
   [Let's see, 350-5("handful")= 345 layoffs.]

3. Rolls-Royce is closing aircraft parts plant in England, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The world's 2nd-largest aircraft engine maker [is] planning to close a parts plant in Derby, England by June 2001, and eliminate up to 180 jobs in a cost-cutting effort.... It [will] buy substitute parts from an Austrian company, Fischer Advanced Composite Components, at a 25% savings. The company expects to save...$4.5m annually for the next 5 years by closing the plant.

4. USX-U.S. Steel says it is planning cuts at Minnesota Mine, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...The country's largest steel producer [will] idle some operations at its Minntac mine near Mountain Iron, Minn., eliminating up to 140 jobs, or 10% of the mine's hourly workers.... The company [based in Pittsburgh] said the closing was partly attributable to "staggering volumes" of steel imports.... Shares...fell.
   [Too bad USX-US Steel isn't as smart as its fellow steel producer Nucor, which "accordions" its workweek instead of its workforce and skillset.]

5. Priceline reduces staff 16% and reports a sales plunge, by Alex Berenson, NYT, C2.
   Priceline.com [based in Norwalk, Conn.] continued its downward slide yesterday, laying off 87 employees, or 16% of its workforce, as it disclosed that its airline ticket sales plunged in October and its CFO had quit. The layoffs will force Priceline to take a one-time charge in Q4.... Priceline's patented "name your own price" service allows consumers to bid on airline tickets and other services over the Internet. The company then aggregates those bids and offers them to suppliers, earning a profit on the difference between what consumers will pay and what the suppliers accept.
   But consumers have proved reluctant to comply with Priceline's bidding rules, and many companies do not want to share their profits with Priceline....
   [Wasn't this the outfit that our fellow Canuck, Captain Kirk (Wm. Shatner) was shilling for? We had a bad feeling about all this from the start.]

• After another rocky quarter, Revlon announces cutbacks, by Leslie Kaufman, NYT, C6.
  After posting its eighth consecutive quarterly loss yesterday...the cosmetics giant controlled by billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, announced yet another round of cutbacks.
  [Thus another nearsighted billionaire cuts blindly into the centrifuged spending activity that undergirds and supports the value of his hoard. Who said wealth equates with wisdom?]
  The moves include the closing of three plants, which will result in the layoffs of 1,115 employees, and come on top of a severe reduction in the company's advertising budget....
  [There's another dumb move. The only thing that supports sales of non-necessities like makeup is constant advertising. The only good thing with this kind of trend is that as production of non-necessities dries up, the associated impact on the biosphere will ease. Of course, unless we start sharing the vanishing work, desperate downsizees will gouge the environment to make a living for even just one more day, like lumbermen clearcutting every last stand of oldgrowth forest, or fishermen dragnetting every square inch of George's Bank.]
  Revlon [will] consolidate North American cosmetics manufacturing in its plant in Oxford, NC.
  [Why do things by halves, Ronald? Why not really accelerate the decline of the Great American Consumer Base and relocate in Mexico, like everyone else? Wages much lower there. Safety standards lower too. And if you 'big men' really clobber American jobs efficiently, maybe we'll see a more visible rate of deterioration and get some real excitement in The World's Greatest Country before we die (a natural death).]
  That means that in the next 12 months, it will close plants in Phoenix, and Mississauga, Ontario [Canada]. The company has already closed a plant in Auckland, New Zealand.
  [Regular as clockwork, every 70 years or so the captains of industry do a mental flipflop and suddenly start thinking that instead of empire-building, they should be empire-shrinking, and it all happens so gradually that it appears totally normal to the morons on Wall Street. Why, here's one of them now -]
  The cost reductions that Revlon will make, including the plant closings, are not surprising or out of line with the rest of the industry, said Heather Murren, managing director of consumer products research at Merrill Lynch....
  [Murren the moron. One of thousands. A consumer products researcher who blithely assumes that consumption is a given, a constant. The spending power, time for shopping, and income that supports it can all be taken for granted. Connection with jobs? "What are you talking about?" But wait, here's an actual glimmer of intelligence -]
  But analysts expressed concern that some of the cuts, particularly in consumer advertising, showed that \Revlon's\ new chief executive, Jeffrey M. Nugent...might be undercutting the "pull" growth strategy. In the third quarter, the company cut its brand-promotion budget nearly in half, to $74.4m from $140m in 3Q99. "The issue with Revlon is that they substantially cut consumer promotional advertising spending as a strategy to increase profitability," said Al Alaimo, a high-yield bond analyst with Banc of America Securities. "For a consumer product company [make that "frivolous product company" -ed.], that is risky.
  [No kidding. They pay him big bucks for these blinding glimpses of the obvious?]
  It saves money in the short run, but in the medium run they could get hurt."
  [But what does Jeff Nugent care about the medium run? He'll be long gone by then, wafting away comfortably on his golden parachute. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow 'we' (meaning 'you all' but not actually 'me') die." Such are the 'incentives' of this kind of win-lose capitalism. Such is the feedback system. With incentives to self-destruct and virtually no negative feedback reaching the wealthy decision-makers, it's just a matter of time....]

1. OfficeMax will close or relocate as many as 50 stores, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The [Ohio-based] 3rd-largest operator of office-products stores, behind Staples and Office Depot, \plans\ to close or move as many as 50 stores - but did not say which ones - and...cut back its expansion plans in 2001. About 2,000 workers will be offered transfers....
   [We assume these would be job transfers to other stores. But are the new commutes feasible or infeasible? And are we implying that all the employees in the 50 closed or moved stores are going to be offered transfers or just some of them? If the inadequate information we have here is any indication of how OfficeMax is handling this, it looks rough for employees - so we'll simply count this as 2000 lost jobs.]

2. British American Tobacco [BAT], NYT, C4.
   ...Louisville, Ky., said its Brown & Williamson unit, the No. 3 cigarette maker in the United States, would eliminate as many as 300 jobs, or 5% of its U.S. staff, at a plant in Macon, Ga., to cut costs as sales decline.
   [We're not going to recommend timesizing to a cigarette company, because we're happy to have fewer people dependent for their livelihood on health-damaging (in this case, carcinogenic) products.]

Click here for downsizing stories in -
Oct/2000.
Sep.16-30/2000.
Sep.1-15/2000.
Aug.16-31/2000.
Aug.1-15/2000.
Jul.16-31/2000.
Jul.1-15/2000.
Jun/2000.
May/2000.
Apr/2000.
Mar/2000.
Feb/2000.
Jan/2000.
Dec/1999.
Nov/99.
Oct/99.
Sept/99.
Aug.16-31/99.
Aug.1-15/99.
July/99.
May-Jun/99.
Mar-Apr/99.
Jan-Feb/99.
December/98.
November/98.
October/98.
prior to Sept. 30/98.

For more details, our laypersons' guide to our great economic future Timesizing, Not Downsizing is available at bookstores in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. or from *Amazon.com online.

Questions, comments, feedback? Phone 617-623-8080 (Boston) or email us.