Timesizing® Associates - HOMEPAGE

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Downsizings, January 1-15/2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

1/15/2001  1 weekend downsizing report, totaling unspecified lost jobs

• MobShop, a group-buying site, drops its consumer business - A company decides to focus on corporate clients, by Laurie Flynn, NYT, C2.
  [How original. Them and everybody else! From b2c to b2b, business to consumer > business to business.]
  ...One of a handful of companies offering group buying on the Internet is closing its consumer operations on the heels of the recent announcement that its chief competitor, Mercata Inc., was going out of business....
  [Talk about lemmings! Use-to-be that when your competitor went out of business, you rejoiced and took over his markets. Today these guys have such a herd mentality, one white flag goes up and they're all fluttering.]
  MobShop, which first began its service 2½ years ago, began leaning more toward the business market last year. In June it signed a contract with the government's General Service Administration as part of a pilot project to introduce group buying to Buyers.gov, a website for government procurement. Companies that have implemented its group-buying service include Citibank, AOL.com and Inktomi....
  [So, unspecified jobcuts.]

1. NBC, facing a drop in ads, will cut up to 600 positions, by Claudia Deutsch, NYT, B14.
   NBC, accelerating a continuing cost-cutting program in the face of a drop in advertising, will cut 5-10% of its workforce, or anywhere from 300 to 600 jobs....
   [Let's split the diff and call it a 7.5% downsizing with 450 jobcuts.]
   The company expects to reduction, at least some of which it hopes will be achieved through attrition...
   [Yeah, of their smartest people...]
   to be complete by the end of March.... NBC, like all networks, is experiencing a steep drop in advertising revenue. Many Internet start-ups, once a major source of revenue, have collapsed, while others have cut ad spending. Even profitable old-economy companies are cutting budgets.
   [Sigh. Won't it be nice when they cut this crap about "old economy"-"new economy" now that we know dot-coms are no different from any other companies - they can't work forever on no profits because there's a limit to the gullibility even of venture capitalists.]
   ..\.."It is no secret that the current economic climate is affecting our business," NBC's chairman, Robert Wright, said in a memo to employees yesterday. "It is now clear that we must go beyond belt-tightening and take the additional step of reducing the size of our work force."...
   [Two comments. (1) Isn't it funny how, when the fattest cats start caterwauling about "belt-tightening," it's always somebody else who gets to starve, not them. Our Timesizing design follows Lincoln Electric's much more team-galvanizing approach of "everyone sacrifices together." (2) This story shows the domino effect of a downturn in one much-publicized industry. We might have thought that something so bloody "new economy" as dot-coms would be insulated and be able to rise and fall in its own "new economy" without affecting anything else - but oh no = another evidence of the inapplicability and gullibility of the whole "new economy" hype.]

2. American Electric Power laying off 370 workers, Reuters via NYT, B3.
   ...at 2 coal mines it is shutting down, the Windsor Coal Co. underground mine in West Liberty, W. Va., and the Central Ohio Coal Co. surface mine in Cumberland, Ohio, on or about March 15. The company will then begin environmental reclamation efforts at the mines.... The company said last August that it would seek to sell all its mining interests in Ohio and West Virginia.

1. Nortel [Networks] plans to cut 4,000 jobs as part of revamping program,
   by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C1 & flagged by Martin Evans of U. of Tor. Mgmt.
   TORONTO - ...The communications equipment maker based in Canada [plans] to cut 4,000 jobs [4% of its workforce] as part of an effort to streamline and realign its operations. About 950 employees have already been let go from its operation in Ottawa and in Brampton, Ont.  A spokeswoman for Nortel, Vicki Contavespi, said the layoffs reflected a "need to rejigger our work force; it's not a crisis."
   ["Don't worry, be happy."]
   She said that the jobs being eliminated were mainly in voice communications products, a slow-growth business. "We are recruiting aggressively for our wireless and optical Internet and e-business operations," she said, "because those are the things that are important to our customers."
   [Why aren't they "retraining aggressively" instead of "recruiting aggressively"??? This may be the main factor that will change our present management mentality - CEOs today are FULL of happytalk about themselves and their "companies" in the abstract, but they have little faith in the versatility of their own employees (i.e., their real company), and that little faith leads them to this disastrous policy of downsizing, which can then build and spread throughout the economy, from company to company like a forest fire leaping from treetop to treetop, and generate a firestorm to recession, or even a holocaust into depression. Executives of the future, who are already present in a few corporations such as Lincoln Electric, practice a lot more retraining and cross-training, a LOT more. The rest are cutting their training budgets and waiting for a groundswell of other CEOs to do it first so they don't carry-along "unnecessary costs" and "become uncompetitive."]
   Despite the layoffs, the global workforce of Nortel...will remain at about 94,500 this year, the company said.
   [But where will the morale go?]
   With the acquisition of several companies, mainly specialists in the Internet and in fiber optics, the number of Nortel employees has increased by 15% during the last year.
   [An "increase" in one company's workforce merely by the acquisition of other companies' workforces is not a net increase in the market-demanded working hours of the nation or the world. It does not constitute "ammo" for the double-talking critics of the "lump of labor" (i.e., of employment) theory.]
   ...There are concerns about the overall demand for equipment.
   [And downsizings don't help. They don't cushion falling demand. They aren't neutral. They are the "engine" of falling demand. And Nortel is practicing them and stoking its own falling demand.]
   One potential problem is that...communications companies will find it harder to compete as the North American economy slows and...companies...put off off equipment purchases.

2. Workers at Danone factory strike over report of cuts, Reuters via NYT, C3.
   Workers at a cookie factory owned by Groupe Danone went on strike yesterday after Le Monde, the French newspaper, published a report that the company planned to eliminate 3,000 jobs across Europe, 1,700 of them in France. Union officials said that the 244 employees who walked off the job at the LU plant in Lille in northern France would meet today to decide whether to continue the strike....
   [The French are bound to develop the best managers in the world, because they are not sitting around talking about the "discipline of the workforce" like American managers. Au contraire, they themselves are constantly being disciplined by their feisty workforce. By now, American employees have been "disciplined" so much that they're functioning like lobotomized robots, repeating, with ever hollower pride and evermore metal-stressed tones, "24/7, 24/7, 24/7...." - then occasionally snapping and shooting themselves &/or others.]

3. Gateway to fire 10% of workers as sales dip, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C2.
   SAN DIEGO - ...The No. 2 direct-seller of personal computers will fire more than 2,400 employees, or 10% of its workers, because Q4 profit was a third of what the company predicted.... The firings will result in a $50m pretax charge in Q1.... "The marketplace is extremely weak, and there's no sign of improvement any time soon," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray....

4. Brach's is closing Chicago plant and cutting 1,000 jobs, AP via NYT, C3.
   Brach's Confections [will] phase out manufacturing operations in Chicago, where it was founded nearly a century ago, and eliminate about 1,000 jobs by the end of 2003. Up to 160 jobs will be eliminated this year. Much of the company's production will be contracted out to other American manufacturers.... The Chicago plant, parts of which date from the 1920's, is too old to operate efficiently, a spokesman said. Though Brach's has been formally based in Chattanooga TN since it merged with Brock Candy in 1994, most top executives work in Chicago, and will continue to do so after the plant is shut down.

5. USG cuts 500 jobs and plans millions in charges, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
   The USG Corp...eliminated about 500 jobs and [will] take Q4 charges of $557m after taxes. Though some of the charges will cover the costs of closing production lines, most are for settling asbestos-liability claims pending against the company's U.S. Gypsum subsidiary through 2003....

6. Sotheby's to cut 8% of work force, pointer digest (to C4), via NYT, C1.
   Bracing for mounting fines, legal expenses and a possible downturn in the art market...the troubled auction house [plans] to cut about 8% of its worldwide staff, to about 1,900 employees from 2,050 [i.e., 150 jobcuts]. The downsizing will result in a Q4 charge of about $14m, mostly for severance-related expenses....

7. Moore Corp., NYT, C3.
   ...Toronto, a printer of business forms, [will] close its research and development center in Grand Island, NY, cutting 130 [43%] of the 300 jobs there, to reduce costs by $100m in the next 12-18 months. The building will also be sold....

1. Service Merchandise to lay off 1,750 employees, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...A catalog jewelry retailer...based in Nashville \will\ cut about 23%...of its 7,600 employees to reduce costs as it prepares to leave Chapter 11.... The company will also consolidate its field operations and space at its HQ and reorganize its jewelry repair unit. [It] has 218 stores in 31 states....

2. Ross Perot's computer company to cut 200 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   The Perot Systems Corp...founded by the billionaire Ross Perot [will] cut...2.7% of its workforce to focus on selling services to finance, healthcare and manufacturing companies....
   [Ah, everyone's scrambling from b2c (business to consumer) to b2b (business to business) - but every business depends ultimately on consumers. Two thirds of the economy is directly dependent on consumer demand and the rest indirectly.]

3. Potlatch Corp., NYT, C4.
   ...Spokane, Wash., a maker of paper and lumber [will] eliminate 124 jobs at its pulp, paperboard and tissue operations in Lewiston, Idaho, to reduce costs. Potlatch, which employs about 2,600 people in Idaho, [has] offered early retirement or retraining to the laid-off workers.

4. Caliber Learning Network, NYT, C4.
   ...Baltimore, a provider of communications and training over the Internet [will] dismiss 40 of its 223 employees, or 17% of its workforce, to reduce costs as the company tries to become profitable.

5. Reebok selling unit headquarters, by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, E9.
   ...A maker of athletic footwear and apparel confirmed it is putting up for sale the Marlborough MA headquarters of its Rockport division. Over the next 6 months, plans call for the nearly 200 jobs at the Rockport facility to be transfered to Reebok's new corporate HQ in Canton MA, where roughly 1,000 employees now work. In making the transfers, "a very, very small number" of Rockport jobs will be lost because of redundancies....
   [So, unspecified jobcuts.]

1. Amer Oyj, NYT, C4.
   ...Helsinki, the Finnish owner of the Wilson sports and Atomic ski brands, [will] close its United States tennis ball factory in Fountain Inn, SC, and move production to a factory near Bangkok [Thailand], because of rising labor and raw material costs. The closure would result in the loss of 300 jobs.

2. Send.com can't hang on, to shut operations, by Stephanie Stoughton, Boston Globe, D3.
   ...Send.com is...bidding farewell to 82 employees....

3. Rouge Industries Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Dearborn, Mich., which manufactures and sells hot rolled, cold rolled and electrogalvanized sheet steel, [will] dismiss about 60 workers and idle the smaller of its two blast furnaces for 3-5 weeks, because of falling sales to automakers and competition from imported steel.
   If Rouge is really "dismissing" them, and they're the ones who've been running that smaller blast furnace, who the heck is going to run the furnace after 3-5 weeks?]

4. Regional Business in brief...Etc., Globe Wire Services via Boston Globe, D7.
   Burlington's Excelon Corp. said it's cutting about 40 jobs, or about 10% of its workforce, to focus on its b2b and data management products....

5. HMO to lay off 25, NYT, C4.
   As part of its financial turn-around plan, the struggling health insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care will lay off 25 employees in the next few days, executives said. The layoffs will further shrink Harvard Pilgrim's staff, which is far smaller than it was a year ago, when the HMO was forced into state receivership. Spokesman Alan Raymond said the layoffs will be scattered among various departments. In 1999, Harvard Pilgrim had 3,500 employees in Massachusetts and 1,500 in Rhode Is. But in January 2000, the HMO discovered it had unexpected 1999 losses of $227m and it was taken over by state regulators to protect the plan's 1m members. Since then the HMO has shut its Rhode Is. operations and reduced Mass. staff through layoffs and attrition to 1,700.
   [Hm, 1999 3500 Ma. plus 1500 RI totals 5000, but today, only 1700. That means 3300 layoffs altogether scattered across the months, but we'll just count 25 here.]

6. Dumbfounded by dot-com's demise - MutualFunds.com seemed to have it all together - but too late, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, D1.
   ...By September, it had raced through $3m in venture financing, laid off all 24 employees....
   [And not counted then.]

7. TWA to accept AMR buyout, AP via Boston Globe, D2.
   ST. LOUIS - Trans World Airlines will announce today...at 9 am in New York..\..its plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and accept a buyout by AMR Corp.'s American Airlines.... TWA CEO Bill Compton...promised...that St. Louis would remain a hub \and\ American would keep all of the airline's union employees....
   [And presumably let go an unspecified number of non-union employees.]

1. Ameritrade issues profit warning and plans staff cut, AP via NYT, C4.
   The Ameritrade Holding Corp. warned yesterday that its Q1 losses would be wider than expected and announced plans to lay off about 300 workers to cut expenses. Shares...fell....

2. Web consultant to cut 280 jobs, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, D6.
   Cambridge Techology Partners Inc...will lay off...7% of its workforce and warned of a revenue shortfall because of a slowing demand for its Web consulting services.... The Cambridge [Ma.]-based company said 10 jobs would be cut from its Mass. workforce of 363, housed at its Kendall Sq. HQ. The balance of the cuts would be spread across its other sites in the U.S. and abroad.... Cambridge Technology had 3,850 employees prior to the cuts.

3. Kozmo.com closes operations in 2 cities, by Jayson Blair [=‘Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception,’ 5/11/2003 NYT, A1], NYT, C4.
   The financially troubled online delivery service...closed its operations in Houston and San Diego last week and laid off 120 employees, or about 5% of its approximately 2,000 workers.... The company still has operations in 9 cities..\.. All the workers in Houston and San Diego were laid off, as were about a dozen in Chicago and about 10 at its corporate HQ in New York. Kozmo [is] expected to run out of cash by the end of this month....

4. MVP.com fires 36 more workers, by David Barboza, NYT, C4.
   The closely held Internet sporting goods retailer...which is affiliated with Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and John Elway...laid off 36 more employees last week, just a few weeks after announcing that it would cut 79 employees. The 11-month-old company, which now has 43 employees, has fired more than three quarters of its staff in the last few months as it tries to cut costs and reorganize its operations in an increasingly competitive market....

5. Standard Media fires 7% of staff, AP, Boston Globe, D2.
   The publisher of Industry Standard, a fast-growing technology magazine, laid off 7% of its staff, the latest sign of the sobering times gripping the once-exuberant dot-com sector. Standard Media International trimmed 36 workers from its payroll in anticipation of an advertising slowdown this year.... The job cuts were concentrated in the San Francisco-based company's marketing, Internet production, and conference marketing divisions. No reporters, editors, or photographers were dismissed....

6. Net firms announce layoffs, bankruptcies, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, D6.
   ...LavaStorm Inc., a Waltham [Ma.] start-up involved in Web engineering...fired 34 people, or 20% of its workforce, following a drop in business from dot-coms.... LavaStorm - which built the backbone for the Mormon church's massive genealogy website - said the company has been seeking nondot-com clients....

7. Net firms announce layoffs, bankruptcies, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, D6.
   ...GetConnected.com, a Boston-based shopping site for cell phones, Internet connections, and other communication services, let 18 people go, leaving the year-and-a-half-old company with 65 employees.... GetConnected.com said it trimmed its staff to appease its financial backers. The company has just raised a second round of venture capital, following $15m raised last year from Boston's Atlas Venture and others....

8. AT&T, Cablevision complete $1.2.B swap, by Peter Howe, Boston Globe, D7.
   ...All but a handful of local Cablevision employees will keep their jobs....
   [A "handful"? Let's call it 5 jobcuts.]

9. Net firms announce layoffs, bankruptcies, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, D6.
   ...Two start-ups announced they were seeking Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and going out of business: [for example,] e7th.com, a b2b site for the fashion industry....

10. Net firms announce layoffs, bankruptcies, by Beth Healy, Boston Globe, D6.
    ...Two start-ups announced they were seeking Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and going out of business: [for example,] Foodline.com, an online restaurant reservation system.... Foodline has been laying off employees since August.... Ambrosia on Huntingdon, which participated in the test of Foodline's system, saw a couple come in during a sold-out New Year's Eve event, unaware a Web reservation they placed had died in cyberspace. "The technology wasn't there yet," said Gary Fenske, director of operations at the tony restaurant....

1. N.Y. Times cutting 69 Internet unit jobs, by Stephanie Stoughton, Boston Globe, C3.
   ...[because] its Internet division...has suffered from an erosion in dot-com advertising revenue.... The job cuts will reduce the Internet unit's staff of about 400 by 17%. The layoffs were scheduled to take place today and were expected to hit employees at all levels in Times Digital's 4 offices in Boston, Cambridge MA, Santa Rosa CA, and New York..\..
   "...Traditional advertisers are coming into the market," said Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for The New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe. "But they're not coming in as quickly as the dot-coms are exiting." New York Times Digital, which includes Boston.com, Newyorktoday.com, and NYTimes.com, had an operating loss of $46.2m on $37.2m in sales in the first 9 months of 2000....

1. Troubles pile up for California's utilities, NYT, B4.
   ...Southern California Edison [will] lay off 1,450 more workers over several months to save money. Last month, it eliminated 400 jobs.
   [Neither NYT nor Boston Globe reported last month's "elimination," so we'll count it now - 400+1450= 1,850 total jobs eliminated.]

2. Belgian software maker to cut work force by 20%, Reuters via NYT, B3.
   BRUSSELS...- The troubled Belgian software company, Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products [will] lay off 1,200 people, or 20% of its worldwide staff, in an effort to stay afloat....
   "It is with regret that we have to undertake employee layoffs," said John H. Duerden, the recently appointed president. "We were unable to identify any alternatives to this measure."
   [Hello, hello, did you search the Web for downsizing alternatives? Did you look at the Big 3 automakers in the U.S.? Lord God in heaven above, how much imagination does it take to realize that everybody in your company works a certain number of hours and they could work a fraction less than that and share the diminishing payroll - and workload - with no layoffs. What will it take to get this taught at B Schools, instead of the usual "gimmegimmegimme" assumptions coupled with "screwyou"? Cutting hours instead of jobs has to be - and IS - reinvented in every single American recession, and probably every other country's recession - and we'd be dumbfounded if it has appeared in the curriculum of a single business school. The closest it's got is the Lincoln Electric case study at Harvard, but it's nowhere on the regular curriculum, e.g., under "restructuring" or "responding to downturns."]
   ...About half of its 6,000 employees work in the United States, most of them at its American headquarters in Burlington, Mass....

3. Ailing Net firm may quit tony address - Moved to waterfront just one month ago, by Richard Kindelberger, Boston Globe, C1.
   Breakaway Solutions Inc. is considering retreating to Maynard from its spiffy new office space on the South Boston waterfront, only a month after moving in as the anchor tenant. The struggling Internet consultant told staff of the [possibility] last week, when disclosing it would lay off 185 employees....

4. Adero sells venture stake, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, C1.
   Adero Inc...had about 250 people in Sept. but last week cut 23 jobs, following a similar cutback in October....
   [We have nothing on them in October, but we do have a 188 cut on 12/19 (item 6)!]

5. MarchFirst, Internet consulting concern, sets layoffs, Reuters via NYT, B3.
   The Internet consulting company...based in Chicago \is\ undertaking another round of layoffs, after a 10% staff reduction in Nov. failed to achieve the desired cost savings...of $100m [annually]. A spokeswoman...declined to say how many additional jobs were being cut. In November, the company laid off about 1,000 people from its staff of 10,000....
   [So, unspecified additional jobcuts.]

1. Xerox says it will move an equipment line to Mexico, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...its Document Center line of multipurpose digital office equipment [and] eliminate about 200 union jobs at its manufacturing hub in the suburbs of Rochester over the next six weeks. Xerox is trying to trim $1B in annual costs and has announced the elimination...since October [when] it posted its first quarterly loss in 16 years..\..of 3,200 jobs...out of a total workforce of about 94,000 people....
   [Well, we already counted 625 of these 3200 jobcuts on 12/02, which reduced the total workforce to 94000-625= 93,375, so all we have to count now are 3200-625= 2,575 jobcuts, which is 2575/93375x100%= 3% of total surviving workforce.]

2. Retail closings, layoffs continue - Ann & Hope, Sears to cut 840 in [Mass.], by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...Illionois-based..\..Sears Roebuck & Co...plans to close 89 of its nearly 3,000 stores and cut 2,400 jobs so it can focus on productivity and profitability....

3. Retail closings, layoffs continue, by Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...Ann & Hope Inc. of Cumberland, RI...will close all four of its Massachusetts stores by May and lay off 1,400 of its 1,900 workers [74%] as it looks to retrench as a much smaller retail operation. The 4 Bay State stores set to close are in Watertown, Danvers, Seekonk, and North Dartmouth....

4. eToys to dismiss most employees and close 2 warehourses, by Saul Hansell, NYT, C4.
   In a confirmation of the grave prognosis for what had been one of the fastest rising stars on the Internet, eToys said yesterday that it would lay off 700 of its 1,000 employees [70%] and close two of its smaller warehouses. A day earlier, the company said it would close its European operations. Last month, eToys, which had been the No.1 seller of toys on the Internet, said its Q4 sales would be $120-130m, barely more than half its previous forecast.... Even with the cutbacks...the company has cash to last only until March 31....

5. Lockheed Martin to cut 675 jobs [9%] at Georgia plant, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...its plane-assembly plant in Marietta, Ga., to save $25m a year. The plant assembles F-22 fighter jets and C-130J cargo planes and employs about 7,000. Layoffs will begin in June.... Analysts said the company [was] worried about a promised review of all aircraft programs by the new administration....

6. Engage [Inc.] to cut staff by half [50%], by Susan Stellin, NYT, C4.
   In response to increasing pressure for Internet companies to achieve profitability, the online marketing company Engage Inc...based in Andover MA..\..plans...to eliminate 550 positions over several months, reducing its workforce by about half....

7. Covad [Business Solutions] unit plans to lay off 400, AP via Boston Globe, D2.
   ...nearly half its workforce [49%], as parent company Covad Communications Group restructures and cuts costs. The layoffs announced at the high-speed Internet unit in Franklin, Tenn., come on top of 400 layoffs announced by Covad Communications in November [11/28].... Formerly known as Bluestar..\..Covad Business Solutions...merged with Santa Clara CA-based Covad last fall after an IPO last spring failed....
   [So, another case of the lethal takeover-downsizing link.]

8. News Corp. to cut back Web sites - The latest blow to Internet business, by Jayson Blair [=‘Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception,’ 5/11/2003 NYT, A1], NYT, A17.
   Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has decided to scale back sharply its ambitious efforts to provide original content on its websites and plans to lay off several hundred workers within the next few weeks. Hundreds of jobs will be cut or lost through attrition at the New York and Los Angeles offices of the FoxNews.com, FoxSport.com and Fox.com sites on the World Wide Web....
   [Oh we're sure attrition will be a big factor given all of "the next few weeks"!]
   The Chelsea office of News Corp's Internet division on West 18th Street, called News Digital Media, [will] be closed within two months....
   [On the theory that if it was 200, they'd say 200, let's call it 300 layoffs and be prepared to expand it as figures become available.]

9. Advertising - The industry closely watches True North's handover of Chrysler to the Omnicom Group, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C3.
   ...True North, based in Chicago, [will] take a one-time charge of up to $20m in Q4 and lay off about 150 employees in the wake of the loss of the assignments, with billings estimated at $1.8B....

10. Gensym to fire 60, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, D7.
    ...A maker of software used in manufacturing and supply management will fire...27% of its workforce to reduce costs by about $10m a year.... Ten of the jobcuts will be at its Cambridge MA HQ and the rest will be elsewhere in the US and Europe. The company will close offices in Genoa...Tunis... and Munich....

11. Armstrong Holdings, NYT, C4.
    ...Lancaster PA, which designs and manufactures floors and ceilings [will] cut 56 employees at Armstrong World Industries, its main operating subsidiary, at the end of the month because of slower sales.

12. George Magazine to cease publication, by Alex Kuczynski, NYT, C3.
    George, the magazine founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. that combined politics and celebrity...will cease publication with the March issue....
    [Ergo, unspecified lost jobs.]

13. Mercata [Inc.] is latest online casualty, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
    ...An online merchandise auctioneer that is majority owned by the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures [is] closing its doors after failing to raise more money. Mercata.com [is] its website where consumers can team up to buy specially advertised products at a discount and bid on products to make the price cheaper....
    [How original. Wasn't this exactly the PriceLine formula? How do such copycats justify their existence?]
    News of the closing came a day after Mercata canceled a $100m IPO.
    [Must have taken some fast attitude adjustment. Ergo, unspecified lost jobs.]

1. [industrywide equivalent, so not counted in running total -]
   Official Japan does musical chairs, and desks - Tokyo's biggest reorganization in decades, by Stephanie Strom, NYT, A3.
   ...The Japanese government is in the throes of the biggest reorganization in more than a century. Over the last several weeks, some 540,000 officials have been engaged in a giant game of musical chairs as 23 ministries and agencies consolidate themselves into 13 on Jan. 6, part of a grand plan to streamline Japan's powerful bureaucracy and, in the process, weaken its grip on Japanese life. The 128 bureaus inside those ministries and agencies will be whittled down to 96, and the number of advisory bodies serving them to 89 from 211. "Everyone's meishi [business card] will be...changed"..\..said Makiko Matsuda, who was running the..\..small printing shop in the basement of the Ministry of Trade and Industry....
   As for redundant jobs, the government intends to cut 135,000 public employees - 25% of the total - over the next decade, largely through attrition. Some of those will retire, but officials hope that many will be absorbed into the private sector....
   [Well, there's contradictory messages - "largely through attrition" vs. hoping "that many will be absorbed into the private sector." Perhaps it should have read, "some through attrition." How strange that the government is contemplating sinking billions into makework programs to 'jumpstart' the economy out of its decade-long depression, yet planning to clobber wages and spending by dumping 135,000 civil servants into the job market from erstwhile secure posts in the greatest makework program of them all, government bureaucracy. And you know that the remaining 405,000 civil servants are hardly going to be efficient. But if they cut the government workweek 25% instead of the workforce, virtually everyone would get more efficient because they'd all be prioritizing like samurai and trying to get done in 6 hours what they used to have 8 to do.]

2. Office Depot to close stores and cut jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The top American retailer of office supplies [plans] to close 70 stores in 18 states and Canada, eliminate 1,590 jobs and take a Q4 pretax charge of up to $300m related to the cutbacks. The chain will withdraw entirely from Cleveland and Columbus, Phoenix, and Boston. It will close other less profitable stores, including 5 in NY, 3 in NJ and 2 in CT.... The company [will] spruce up some of its 818 surviving stores in North America....

3. Kinko's buys rest of Internet venture, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C2.
   ...An operator of 1,100 photocopying and printing stores bought the rest of Kinkos.com it doesn't already own and will trim the Internet venture's workforce.... Closely held Kinko's will cut 80 to 90% of the 70 workers at the venture's HQ in Alexandria, Va....
   [Let's cut the smoke and say 85% of 70 = 60 jobcuts.]
   Ventura, Calif.-based Kinko's and...Livelyprint.com formed Kinkos.com in March. Kinkos.com will shut its Alexandria office and will begin cutting jobs in Q1.

4. Musicmaker.com seeks OK to close, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C2.
   ...[A firm that] allows music fans to make customized compact discs online decided to shut down and sell its assets because it is unable to compete against rival free services such as Napster Inc. Musicmaker.com will seek shareholder approval to sell its assets after it finds a buyer willing to purchase the money-losing business for more than $32m, about the amount of cash it had at the end of Q3....
   [So, unspecified layoffs.]

1. Nacco Industries Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Mayfield Heights, Ohio, which designs, makes and markets forklift trucks and also owns coal mining and household appliance companies, [will] close Nacco Materials Handling Group Inc., its lift truck assembly plant subsidiary in Danville, Ill., putting about 680 people out of work in a phase-out covering 12-18 months.

2. Three software makers announce layoffs to cut costs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...CommTouch Software Ltd., an Israeli maker of Web-based messaging software said [that] it would shut its electronic-commerce and small-business e-mail services units, and that it expected to reduce its workforce by one-fifth [20%] in 2001.
   [Only one story had a clue about the number of layoffs - "Commtouch 4th-qtr sales to miss estimate; share drop," Bloomberg Jan/02/2001 12:08 ET via AOLNews - "20% of its 490 workers" = 98 layoffs. "It was a one-two punch," said CEO Gideon Mantel. "The sales people that went after the dot-coms found that a good portion of the business is basically vanishing, while it's hard to get orders from larger companies." This is the vicious circle that leads to depression, folks - you're seeing it unfold before you as we speak. Modern economies, desperate for jobs, start all kinds of superfluous business. But then the fool CEOs start talking about "efficiency" and "lean and mean" - which is a total joke given the desperate position they've put us all in by failing to cut working hours per person way back as the work is taken over by wave after super-efficient wave of technology - none of which purchases its own output - and the bottom line is exactly what we see happening in this story - they succeed only in shrinking the economy back to a lower level of necessity, a lower level of "urgency of demand" (Dahlberg).]

3. Three software makers announce layoffs to cut costs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...Viador Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., which makes software for creating corporate Web sites [will] eliminate 87 jobs, or 36% of its workforce, and take a $500,000 charge, also in Q4..\..to cut costs at a time when sales are slowing....

4. Three software makers announce layoffs to cut costs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...Pegasystems Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., which makes customer-service software [will] eliminate 75 jobs, or 13% of its workforce in Q4 of 2000..\..to cut costs at a time when sales are slowing....

1. Hungary gets hurt by own success - New jobs raised wages, costs; now firms are leaving, by George Jahn, Boston Globe, A6.
   ...Mannesmann, a German conglomerate, is relocating its car radio and compact disc plant just three years after opening it here. The move will strand 1,100 workers, one-third of the...workforce \of\ Sarbogard, Hungary.... The decision to close the plant last Thursday and move to China makes sense.... Raw materials are cheaper \and\ at $60 a month, wages for unskilled labor in China are about one-third what a factory worker here makes....
   [Hey Mannesmann, robots cost about one-hundredth what a Hungarian factory worker makes, but as Reuther said to Ford, "let's see you sell them cars" - or car radios and compact discs. Let's see you sell them to low-wage Chinese workers, for that matter. And you were just beginning to be able to sell them to Hungarians, but now -]
   For the 14,000 inhabitants of Sarbogard, about 30 miles SW of Budapest, the move is devastating. "If Mannesmann goes, we're back to the 1950s"..\..said Sarbogard's mayor, Peter Varnyu...alluding to the darkest days of Hungary's communist stagnation.
   With no movie theater, no malls, nothing but the assembly lines up by Mannesmann in the neat, landscaped grounds on the outskirts of town, life in Sarbogard revolved around the plant. "There wasn't a lot of money, but at least there was some money coming in," said Jozsef Szuecs...a maintenance electrician whose monthly wage of $300 supported himself, his wife, and their child. "I have no clue what's going to happen to us now," he said, eyes reddened by tears, after he left his early morning shift....

2. Hungary gets hurt by own success...Now firms are leaving, by George Jahn, Boston Globe, A6.
   ...In recent months, Shinwa of Japan closed its cassette tape deck assembly plant in Miskolc, a loss of 500 jobs, and moved to China....

3. Hungary gets hurt by own success...Now firms are leaving, by George Jahn, Boston Globe, A6.
   ...A German-Swiss cement factory [co. name???] in Belapatfalva, near the Slovak border, has shut down, laying off 300 workers....

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