1. IBM to export highly paid jobs to India, China, by William Bulkeley, WSJ, B1.
   In one of the largest moves to "offshore" highly paid US software jobs, IBM Corp. has told its managers to plan on moving the work of as many as 4,730 programmers to India, China and elsewhere.
   The unannounced plan, outlined in company documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, would replace thousands of workers at IBM facilities in Southbury CT, Poughkeepsie NY, Raleigh NC, Dallas TX, Boulder CO, and elsewhere in the US. Already, the managers have been told, IBM has hired 500 engineers in India to take on some of the work that will be moved....
   [Disregarding the fact that we should be dealing in terms of average-US-job-equivalents, with a factor to correct for lower-wages in India and resulting consumer-base damage in the U.S., we'll simply deduct the new 'jobs' in India from the joblosses in the U.S., leaving us with 4730-500= 4,230 net jobcuts.]
   IBM calls its plan, first presented initially to some medieval oops midlevel managers in October, "Global Sourcing." It involves people in its Application Management Services Group, a part of IBM's giant global-services operations, which comprise more than half IBM's 315,000 employees.
   [So 4230 cuts is only a 4230/315000= 1.3% downsizing which could easily have been dealt with by a 1.3% timesizing for the whole company with damaging its and our consumer base.]
   [Followup -]
   Bracing for the blow - Waving good jobs goodbye at I.B.M., op ed by Bob Herbert, NYT, A35.
   ..."Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored euphemisms for shipping work overseas. IBM prefers the term "global sourcing."...
   [Suddenly, natural market-demanded employable manhours have become every nation's most precious vanishing resource.]

1. Gillette plans to close 2 [blade and razor] plants in England, NYT, C4.
   ...and move production to a new plant...in Eastern Europe...eliminat[ing] 1,200-1,500 jobs...to cut costs....

2. PolyOne to close vinyl film plant in [Burlington] New Jersey, NYT, C4.
   ...in Feb., eliminating 115 jobs....

3. Kroger Co. - Workers ratify labor contract in three states and end strike ...Kroger said three of the 44 stores affected by the strike won't reopen.
   [Unspecified job loss.]

1. Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., newsprint producer, closes 2 mills, Bloomberg via NYT, C3 (??WSJ, A12).
   in Lufkin TX and Port-Alfred QUE on Sunday, putting about 1,220 employees, or 8% of its workforce, out of work..\..in the face of slack prices for newsprint....
   [Let's see. Was it a Lufkin in Tove Jansson's "Moominvalley in November" (1971)? Naw, it was a Snufkin. And a Fillyjonk. And a Toft. And a Hemulen. And a Mymble. And a Nummulite.]
   The company, which is based in Montreal \and\ produces nearly 1/5 of the total newprint worldwide, will also permanently close two idled paper machines, one in Port-Alfred and one in Sheldon TX....

2. Dana Corp., NYT, C3.
   ...Toledo OH, an autoparts supplier [will] lay off 200 workers at its plant in Ft. Wayne IN, 1/3 of the plant's workforce, next spring after losing a contract with DaimlerChrysler.

3. Warnaco to cut costs by closing Speedo stores, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
   ...its 44 remaining Speedo Authentic Fitness.stores...to focus on...wholesale....
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

1. Lender sees weaker profit as mortgage boom eases - Washington Mutual [WaMu] to cut jobs as its key business shrinks, by Kenneth Gilpin, NYT, C4.
   ...to cut costs by $1B over the next year and a half, beginning in 1Q04,.\..reflecting the sharp slowdown in home mortgage and re-fi activity. The company, ...based in Seattle, [plans to] eliminate 2,900 jobs.... From August through November, WaMu...eliminated the equivalent of 4,500 full-time positions in its home-lending support operations. The bulk of this total reflects a reduction in temporary and contract personnel and in decreased overtime....
   [If we knew the percentage done by decreasing overtime, we could give them credit for timesizing to reduce downsizing. But we don't.]
   Currently WaMu has about 59,000 employees....
   [So we count 2900+4500= 7,400 eliminated positions, which is a 7400/59000= 12.5% downsizing.]

2. SBC Communications plans to cut up to 4,000 jobs (2.3%), AP via NYT, C4 (//WSJ, B6).
   ...[the 2nd-largest US phone company]...through employee buyouts and attrition...no layoffs....

3. America Online to trim 2% of workforce, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...400 jobs, [mostly] software engineers, with about 375 of them at the Mtn View CA campus.

4. Georgia-Pacific to combine units in cost-cutting move, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...a leading maker of plywood.... The number of jobs affected by the combination is not known yet....

5. Hewlett-Packard merging 2 units, NYT, C4.
   ...its services and business-computer divisions to avoid duplicating sales work.... The new business, tech solutions, cuts the company's operating units to 3 from 4....
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

6. Abercrombie & Fitch to end its racy magazine, by Carr & Rozhon, NYT, C1.
   ...The apparel retailer [will] no longer publish its provocative quarterly magazine...A & F Quarterly..\..which included photos of nude and nearly nude young models....
   [Unspecified jobs lost.]

• No cheer for the unemployed, editorial, NYT, A28.
  With a perverse sense of holiday timing, pResident Bush and the Republican 'leaders' of Congress are blithely accepting the expiration of emergency benefits badly needed by the nation's long-term unemployed....
  [Not just 'blithely accepting' but actually preaching in favor of, if yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial is any indication -]
  The jobs [vs. jobless] recovery - It's coming along, if Congress doesn't get in the way, editorial, 12/08/2003 WSJ, A14.
  ...While the [0.1% jobless] reduction wasn't large [no kidding], the current rate is at levels that several years ago would have been cheerfully hailed as full employment [when the Fed fostered unemployment at the 6% NAIRU (non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment) to control inflation].... So leave it to Congress to interfere in a way that would prevent the rate from falling further [by] extend[ing] unemployment insurance [UI] payments for another 13-to-26 weeks, after the current extension expires at the end of this month [which] would be the 4th time since the spring of 2002 that benefits have been extended beyond their normal six months.... Findings discussed in this year's Economic Report to the pResident..\..by the White House Council of Economic Advisers...argue that jobless insurance creates a disincentive to return to work....
  [Here again, we have the twin assumptions that it's all about the discretionary jobless, not the uncapped top income brackets, and that this is a 'recovery' in a job-creation sense, regardless of ongoing automation and robotization. It's as if 'conservatives' assume Timesizing is already operating to the spread the well-paid market-demanded employment and on-the-job training to anyone who wants it. Meanwhile, their markets continue to erode as desperation spreads and people settle for lower and lower pay. But 'conservatives' seem incapable of parsing the difference between high- and low-wage jobs (and their effect on markets) or the difficulty in accessing training in today's labor-surplus-induced "burden-the-employee" culture.]
  Based on work by Lawrence Katz, former chief economist at the Dept. of Labor in the Clinton Administration, the report shows that people tend to find jobs just before benefits run out. Jobless workers who receive benefits are more than twice as likely to find a job in the week before their benefits expire than in the several weeks immediately preceding expiration....
  [Gee, could that possibly be because they despair of finding a job that pays as well as the one they got laid off from, so in desperation they settle for lower pay? And that couldn't possibly have a cumulative weakening effect on domestic consumer markets at all now, could it! Compare today's simple-minded rejoicing on the part of Bush's Secy of Labor -]
  Where the workers are, by Elaine Chao, WSJ, A26.
  Last Friday's upbeat news about the continued growth in the labor market is another reminder that it is time to drop the word "jobless" when referring to the current economic recovery. November's unemployment rate fell to 5.9% and the economy gained 57,000 jobs.
  [Never mind that we needed 6 times that amount to offset job losses and get into actual recovery.]
  This represents four straight months of job growth totaling 328,000 jobs -
  [That's what we need in ONE month for real recovery.]
  - the most robust four-month record in three years....
  [Yep, we're really in trouble - because we're still downsizing, and Bush hasn't a clue what kind of aggregate safety net (eg: automatically unemployment-absorbing workweek fluctuation) would handle that kind of punishment. Back to the Times -]
  This vital program ends on Dec.21, crushing the hopes of an estimated 80,000 or more jobless Americans each week who will find their state benefits expiring....
  [Compare the 200,000,000 unemployed in China in the article below - and for them there's no unemployment insurance to "result in" higher unemployment and longer spells of unemployment, as the Journal editorial claims. Basically, the Journal's attention is at the wrong end of the problem. The Times brushes against the right end -]
  ...Members of the House and Senate are this week making drop-by visits to the Capitol to attend to the pork-packed, deficit-stoking spending bills that still gag their agenda....
  [There's this 'conservative' assumption that the principle of marginal utility actually works in reverse, and if we can just concentrate more and more money in the top brackets, everything will get better and better. Never mind that the Invisible Hand in economics was actually the balancing influence of the very visible hand in politics that was extending the vote to more and more people and countering the default centripetal forces on money that would otherwise concentrate and de-activate more and more of it in the top brackets, not to mention noblesse oblige in the aristocracy surviving from the feudal period that prevented a stifling concentration of the Japanese national income till the late 1980s when they finally dropped their lifetime employment and started copying American downsizing.]
  ...By the time Congress returns to business six weeks from now, an estimated half-million more unemployed will have missed out on the federal benefits. They will join a backlog of the more than 2,000,000 long-term unemployed so out of sight and out of mind during the Republicans' holiday recess.
  [Hmm, one hundredth of China's number - wonder where the US number comes from? If these 2m people have any brains, that'll be 2m more votes against Bush in 2004. Not that any of the Dems are too clear on what to do, although Dennis Kucinich does have a copy of Timesizing, Not Downsizing.]

• Jobs here and in China a White House topic, by Jim Yardley, NYT, A11.
  ...As American leaders in both parties complain about lost[-to-China] manufacturing jobs and push for China [and Japan!] to revalue its currency, China has its own serious jobs problem. In recent years, the shock therapy of China's economic restructuring has caused huge layoffs at old, unprofitable state-owned factories, while a crowded countryside has too little usable land and too many farmers....
  [First time we've seen "shock therapy" applied to China - usually it's just been applied to Russia, thanks to that dufus, Jeffrey Sachs. But all things are relative. Russia's shock therapy was a lot faster and more shocking, but China is so big and the stupid factory closings, though slower than in Russia, still so fast relative to any kind of absorbability, that, yeah, this is shock "therapy" too though as in Russia, the therapy part remains to be seen except by the crudest measures, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - they don't call it "gross" for nothing.]
  China's economic growthrates remain the envy of the world,
  [or at least of the superficial USA and UK anyway]
  but many economists say the continuing 'boom' [our quotes] is still not providing enough new jobs to curb unemployment..\..
  [Economists still can't get it through their heads that growth in the age of automation and robotics has no necessary effect on jobs and derivative consumer markets.]
  Factory unemployment is highest in the northeastern Rust Belt, where state-owned enterprises have either closed or downsized. Experts estimate that as many as 200 million farmers and rural workers are either unemployed or underemployed in a country of 1.3B people. And one report in the state news media found that only half of college graduates got jobs this year, compared with 95% in 1997....
  [Gotta flex up those old brains, drop those obsolete ideas of how long a "full-time" job is and just share the scarce, market-demanded employment hours, however brief that means the worktime per person must be set.]

1. Job cuts follow recovery in South Korea, by Samuel Len, NYT, W1.
   ...SOUTH KOREA...- Employment worries are growing [here] as signs proliferate that lifetime jobs are now a luxury of the past.
   [Looks like S.Korea is poised to screw itself with downsizing just as Japan did in the late 1980s.]
   The big blow came this fall, when the KT Corp., the country's largest phone company, said it was shedding more than 5,000 employees, or 1/8 of its workforce [12.5%]....

2. Job cuts follow recovery in South Korea, by Samuel Len, NYT, W1.
   ...Last month, LG Card, [positioned as] the country's largest credit card company and recently rescued by emergency loans from creditors, said it planned to shed about 700 of its 2,800-member workforce....

3. Job cuts follow recovery in South Korea, by Samuel Len, NYT, W1.
   ...Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, a unit of the Doosan Group that builds powerplants, shed about 300....

4. Job cuts follow recovery in South Korea, by Samuel Len, NYT, W1.
   ...SK Chemical, a unit of one of S. Korea's largest conglomerates, cut more than 100 at a regional branch....

5. U.S. Steel to close distribution center and record charge, Bloomberg via NYT, C4 (//WSJ, A8).
   ...Its Straightline Source steel distribution center...which has been losing money, will close on Dec. 31.... Straightline, which was started in Oct/2001 with about 100 employees to increase sales to smaller customers, never turned a profit.... US Steel is based in Pittsburgh.

6. Spiegel seeks to close stores after holidays, Bloomberg via NYT, C10.
   ...A bankrupt chainstore and catalog retailer has asked a federal judge for permission to close 30 Eddie Bauer stores and to hire companies to sell inventory at the locations after the holidays. Spiegel Inc. has [already] closed 60 Eddie Bauer stories along with distribution and customer service centers since filing for bankruptcy protection in March....
   [Unspecified job loss.]

1. Mitsubishi plans to lay off 425 at Illinois plant, AP via NYT, B4.
   ...assembly plant in Normal, Ill., next year because of a deep sales slump....
   [Sales slump? - how can that be, in a "recovery"!]
   The layoffs...planned for 1Q04 \and\ the first at the plant since 1999, will cut up to 350 union workers and as many as 75 nonunion workers.... The plant, Mitsubishi's only production plant in North America, has 2,870 union workers and 490 nonunion employees....
   [So 425 cuts is 425/(2870+490)= 425/3360= 12.6, say a 13% downsizing, which should have been handled with a 13% timesizing.]

2. Citing weak demand, 3M says it is cutting 125 more jobs, AP via NYT, B4.
   ...citing weak demand for industrial products like sandpaper and industrial adhesives and tapes....
   [Weak demand? - how can that be, in a "recovery"!]
   The layoffs affect salaried employees at the company's campus in Maplewood MN..\..
   [Campus? "Cut 125 of those students!" However -]
   Layoffs at 3M have slowed since it cut an estimated 6,500 jobs during a restructuring in 2001-2....
   [No wonder there's weak demand today.]

• U.S. gained fewer jobs than expected last month, pointer digest (to A1), NYT, C1.
  [and the main headline -]
  Employers balk at new hirings, despite growth - Only 57,000 jobs created [in Nov. when we need over 300,000/mon.] - Jobless rate falls to 5.9% [from 6.0 in Oct.] and many cheerleaders oops economists remain optimistic, NYT, front page.

1. Schering-Plough to cut 10% from payroll expenses, AP via NYT, C3.
   ...in a move that could eliminate more than 3,000 jobs...with the goal of cutting annual expenses by more than $200m. [The drug maker's cuts will] include an estimated 1,000 positions being eliminated through an early retirement program announced in August for employees in the United States.

2. Tyson Foods to close two older plants, ending 720 jobs, Reuters via NYT, C3.
   ...in February...in Manchester NH [550, and] Augusta ME [170]..\..to improve its manufacturing efficiency.... The company [is] based in Springdale, Ark....
   [That's what you get for selling your local New England plants to an outfit in Arkansas.]

3. Oneida, flatware maker, may shut last plant, AP via NYT, C3.
   ...unless financial recovery comes soon....
   [Well, forget that. Unspecified job loss.]
   On Wed...the world's largest maker and distributor of flatware and tableware reported a quarterly loss of $74.8m, more than half of it related to the closing of 5 factories in Buffalo and overseas..\..
   [Talk about a self-fueling death spiral. The management skills of today's morons are nowhere displayed to greater disgrace -]
   Its CEO, Peter Kallett...said the company might have to outsource manufacturing if it cannot keep its plant open.
   [Compare -]
   Indictment alleges Westar's former CEO [David Wittig] sought to loot firm, WSJ, C1.

1. Tata Iron & Steel will cut 3,000 jobs [7%], WSJ, B4.
   ...based in Bombay, India..\..by the end of the fiscal year. A senior official said, "...40,000 is an ideal staff size that we would like by March."...
   [No reason given. So first we lost jobs to Mexico but now Mexico is losing jobs to India and now even India is losing jobs.]
   \Tata\ has a voluntary-manpower reduction program [what a contrast to a real recovery!] to which about 800 people have already applied..\.. The reduction in staff will also include employees who retire by March [and] an additional 500 people will soon retire....

2. France: Alcatel CIT to cut 470 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, W1.
   ...the biggest maker of broadband Internet equipment...in France at its fixed-line communications and optical systems units...at which demand has declined..\.. and redeploy 900 others in 2004.... Alcatel CIT, which employs 7,600 people, will offer early retirement to employees who volunteer. The company, which is based in Paris, [will] reorganize its teams so that more people work on the mobile unit where demand is growing.
   [Sounds vaguely like our own dear overtime-targeted training, redeployment & hiring.]

3. Canada: Bombardier job cuts, by Bernard Simon, NYT, W1.
   The Canadian aircraft and railcar manufacturer Bombardier...based in Montreal..\..said that it would close some European plants and cut management jobs to improve the profitability of its rail unit....
   [Unspecified job cuts.]

1. Aviva PLC, WSJ, D9.
   ...will 'move' [from UK - our quotes] about 2,500 jobs to India in 2004, increasing its total number of staff in India to 3,700 by the end of next year....
   [From high wage to low wage. From real jobs to 3rd-world drop in bucket and closer to 3rd-world in UK.]
   The company estimates that running call centers in India costs 30-40% less than in the UK..\..
   About 2,000 of the jobs that are 'moving' are in administration and IT, while 500 are at call centers.
   [We have never seen this strained a positive spin on job loss. Watch this -]
   Aviva said 80% of the jobs 'created' in India would be accommodated in the UK by a combination of staff turnover, voluntary redundancies [= layoffs] and current vacancies. But Aviva...couldn't rule out [forced] redundancies among the remaining approx. 500 workers. The company estimates that running call centers in India costs between 30% and 40% less than in the UK..\..
   The UK insurer said the jobs will support its businesses in the UK and Canada. Aviva has 59,000 employees in total, including 33,000 in Britain....
   [2500 vanishing UK jobs are 2500/33000= 7.5% of total UK jobs which could easily have been handled by a 7.5% hourscut for all UK employees if maintaining UK consumer markets were any consideration.]

2. PepsiCo plans to cut 750 jobs and close several plants in Kentucky & Florida, NYT, C2 (//WSJ, B6).

3. FAO Inc. to file for bankruptcy, pointer digest (to C6), NYT, C1.
   ...owner of the F.A.O. Schwarz toy stores, plans to file for bankruptcy protection a second time and...immediately liquidate its 89 Zany Brainy stores....
   [Unspecified jobs lost. It's the toxic takeover-downsizing connection again - since it follows close on RightStart's 2002 takeover of FAO Schwartz for $155m, plus assets of the bankrupt Zany Brainy chain. (RightStart subsequently namechanged to FAO Inc.)]

1. Hartford Financial Services Group to buy unit from CNA Financial for $½B, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...The combination could result in the elimination of 10% of the 3,300 jobs at the [group benefits] unit, a Hartford spokeswoman said....
   [Again the toxic takeover-downsizing connection. Assuming they don't get this specific unless it's beyond 49-51% probable to 80-90% likely, this means 330 jobcuts.]

2. DuPont plans to cut costs, jobs, by Thaddeus Herrick, WSJ, D7 (//NYT, C4).
   ...number...will be disclosed in April....

3. Japan moves to expand cleanup of banks, by Ken Belson, NYT, W1.
   ...There are no more reprieves for Ashikaga Bank.... In [its] case, even though it had laid off 60% of its workforce, losses kept mounting because falling land prices and a sagging local economy undermined its loan portfolio....
   [Unspecified job losses.]

Click here for downsizing stories in -
Nov/2003.
Oct/2003.
Sept/2003.
Aug.16-31/2003.
Aug.1-15/2003.
July/2003.
Jun.17-30/2003.
Jun.3-16/2003.
May/2003 (+Jun.1-2).
Apr.16-30/2003.
Apr.1-15/2003.
March/2003.
Feb.16-28/2003.
Feb.1-15/2003.
Jan.16-31/2003.
Jan.1-15/2003.
Dec/2002.
Nov.16-29/2002.
Nov.1-15/2002.
Oct.16-31/2002.
Oct.1-15/2002.
Sept/2002.
Aug.16-31/2002.
Aug.1-15/2002.
July/2002.
June/2002.
May/2002.
Apr/2002.
Mar/2002.
Feb/2002.
Jan. 16-31/2002.
Jan. 1-15/2002.
Dec. 16-31/2001.
Earlier 2001 downsizings accessible via links at bottom of Dec.16-31/2001 page.
Dec.16-31/2000.
Earlier Y2000 downsizings accessible via links at bottom of Dec.16-31/2000 page.
Dec/1999.
Earlier 1999 months accessible via links at bottom of Dec/1999 page.
December/98.
Earlier months accessible via links at bottom of Dec/98 page.

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.