Timesizing® Associates

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Downsizings in July, 1999
[Commentary] ©1998,1999 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

7/31 General Electric may close two refrigerator plants [lay off 4,600], Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
The General Electric Co. may shut a refrigerator plant in Louisville, Ky., and cut 1,500 jobs, while adding production to a new refrigerator line in Mexico.... General Electric, the No. 1 supplier of large appliances for newly built homes in the United States, notified the Louisville workers of the possible closing on Thursday.
[Let's face it. Even top executives aren't stupid enough to demoralize their workforce & clobber productivity with layoff announcements that ain't really gonna happen. This is a "Dunn" deal.]
A company spokesman, Terry Dunn, said General Electric also planned to notify workers in Bloomington, Ind., that it may shut a refrigerator plant there that employs 3,100 people.
[There's the usual reference to employees, when regarded as disposable costs, as "workers" as if they're all Commies. Also an interesting burying of the bigger layoff in the middle of the story, and no mention of either in the headline. Funny how newspapers are always going for the dramatic - except where the wealthy are kicking the poor (and themselves, we fear, down the line).]
These moves are prompted by regulations scheduled to take effect in June 2001 that will require new refrigerators to use 30% less energy and therefore render the existing models produced in both plants obsolete, Mr. Dunn said.
["Prompted" or "rationalized"? Do top executives really hate energy conservation and the environment so much? What's wrong with them?! They really want a short future?]
The Louisville notice triggers a 45-day bargaining period.
[Great, let's see if the prostrate American labor movement can block this one. If they'd had the sense to keep control of their own supply&demand by forcing the 30-hour workweek that was nearly passed in 1933, they'd still be a powerful movement today. Now they're history, and history they'll remain until they re-target the "one-three pocket," shorter hours.]

7/30  4 More Downsizings Reported (total 920 + unspecified jobcuts) -

1. [Eastman] Kodak to shut down film plant in China, Bloomberg via NYT, C6.
   ROCHESTER, July 29 - The...world's biggest photography company will close its X-ray film plant in Wuxi, China, and dismiss 520 workers because of strict environmental laws that inflated plant-upgrade costs.
   ["Inflated"? or "adjusted to where they should have been all along"?!]
   The plant, on the shore of Lake Tai, will close in August and manufacturing will be shifted to a factory in Shantou. Kodak...said it would rehire about a fourth of the closed plant's workers at a chemical plant it plans to open in Wuxi early next year....
   [Great, so what do they do in the meantime? And what about the other three fourths? How does management expect to base predictable markets on unpredictable livelihoods?]

2. Lubrizol to cut 200 jobs at Ohio fuel additives plant, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...reducing the factory's work force by more than half and saving $21 million a year.... Twenty-three of the plant's 36 production lines will be closed, and most of the work will shift to its Deer Park, Tex., plant. Most of the jobs will be cut through early retirements and voluntary departures, [Lubrizol] said.

3. To cut costs, Respironics is laying off 200 workers, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...A maker of medical devices to treat breathing disorders said yesterday that it would lay off 200 people, or 10% of its work force, to cut costs and refocus its operations. The cost of the changes is expected to reduce Respironics' earnings by about $25 million before taxes.
   [So how do they figure to "cut costs" by reducing earnings $25M?? Sounds like change for the sake of change. In a word, incompetent management. Why not cut costs by cutting pay - and worktime - by 10%, and include top management. Let's see them put their money where their mouth is, for a change.]
   The company, based in Murraysville, Pa., will close one factory and several customer-service operations, and open a distribution and repair center....

4. Boston ad firm to close its doors [costing unspecified layoffs] - CC&D [Communications Inc.] hit by clients' woes, changing market, by Heather Kamins, Bos Globe, E3.
   Unable to compete in a tightening field of big advertising agencies, and with its own financial woes snowballing...the Back Bay advertising and public relations agency, founded in 1984 by three former executives from Hill Holiday Connors Cosmopulos Inc., blamed a string of bad luck that began with some major clients themselves going out of business [e.g., Sunrise Suites Hotel and Casino in Vegas and Comav Corp. telecomms].... CC&D - orifinally Cosmopulos, Crowley and Daley - prospered through the 1980s, but business progressively slowed during the past decade [e.g., the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, their largest account, turned to other agencies]....

1. E.D.S. begins another round of job reductions, AP via NYT, C4.
   Continuing a cost-cutting campaign, the Electronic Data Systems Corp. said yesterday that it had offered early retirement to about 8,000 employees, or 11% of its U.S. work force. EDS, the big information services company base in Plano, Tex., also said it expected to lay off an unspecified number of other staff members by the end of the year. The early-retirement offers and layoffs come on top of the 5,200 positions eliminated in April.... EDS employs 126,000 people worldwide.
   [Don't you love the way each round of layoffs is supposedly the "last round" of layoffs - but there's always "another round," as here. EDS could avoid all this by cutting 11% of their workweek, not their workforce, and prorating pay, like VW and Nucor.]

2. Compaq plans to cut staff by up to 12% - A loss of $184 million is posted for 2d quarter, by Lawrence Fisher, NYT, C1.
   Struggling to return to profitability, the Compaq Computer Corp. said yesterday that it would cut up to 8,000 jobs, or about 12% of its worldwide work force....
   [So much for the current fixation on productivity to save us - computer manufacturing is the highest-productivity 1% of the economy, as mentioned in the current issue of the Economist (scan down to 7/24).]

3. Cabot plans job cuts and an initial public offering, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...The world's largest producer of carbon black said yesterday that it planned to cut 250 jobs, or about 5.6% of its 4,500-person work force, as part of a broad reorganization aimed at lifting earnings. Carbon black is used in printing and tire manufacturing. The job cuts will save the company $30-35 million a year.... [We'll only get out of our current doldrums of progress when we cut the workweek 5.6% for all (including CEOs, and prorate pay) instead of 5.6% of the workforce.]

4. HMO to hike rates up to 15% - Harvard Pilgrim will also lay off hundreds, by Alex Pham, Bos Globe, D1.
   ...The HMO's new chief executive, Charles D. Baker Jr...yesterday declined to specify how many of the HMO's 4,400 employees would be laid off, but estimated that efforts to "reduce administrative costs" would save up to $75 million over the next six months....
   [Every 50-60 years, CEOs forget that their markets are dependent on the jobs they provide. They're permitted this "disconnect" by creeping peacetime labor surplus, which progressively weakens employees' leverage in the job market. Saving money by cutting your own markets is a pretty stupid "strategy".]

1. Foster Wheeler to trim 15% of work force [instead of work week] , Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...One of the world's largest construction and engineering companies [based in Clinton, NJ] said yesterday that it would cut 1,600 jobs, or 15% of its work force, slash its dividend and shut some plants to improve cash flow and earnings....
   [Alternatively, it could have cut to a 34-hour company workweek and kept the company together - and morale, productivity, and markets up.]

2. Lason to cut 3.5% of 11,500-person work force [instead of 3.5% of 40-hour work week], Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...A manager of computer records said yesterday that it would cut 300 to 400 workers, or up to 3.5% of its 11,500-person work force, as it consolidates several [?] sites to streamline operations and cut costs. The company said 24 [24 is more than "several"!] of its 150 facilities would be closed, of which 12 came from the recent acquisition of the M-R Group. The company, based in Troy, Mich...operates in 30 states and throughout North America, Britain, India and the Caribbean....
   [Lason could have cut to a 38.6-hour workweek and kept everyone employed...like Nucor, VW and Lincoln Electric.]

• Bank of New York Co., the world's biggest custodian of investor assets, in March agreed to acquire Royal Bank of Scotland PLC's trust bank.
• Last year, Bank of New York bought trust businesses from Coutts & Co., a unit of National Westminster Bank PLC, Britain's 3rd-largest bank.
• In 1996, Barclays PLC, Britain's 2nd-biggest bank, sold its global custody business to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.
• Morgan Stanley, in turn, sold its whole global custody business last year to Chase Manhattan Corp., the world's number 2 custodian.
• Lloyds TSB agreed in June to buy Scottish Widows Fund & Life Assurance Society for £7 billion, becoming the number 2 UK insurer and manager of pension plans and mutual funds [not actually counted by us until 9/07]

7/24  One Downsizing Reported (200 jobcuts) -

1. PictureTel may fail in bid to catch up with rivals, analysts say - Andover company cuts jobs as losses increase and revenue continues to fall, by Ross Kerber, Bos Globe, C1.
   PictureTel Corp. says a new generation of videoconferencing products won't be ready until next year.... Concerns about.... It disclosed it had cut 200 of its 1,600 jobs [12.5%] in recent months and said it expects more cost-cutting ahead....
   [If P-Tel had not followed the herd and cut 12.5% of its workweek instead of its workforce, it would now have soaring morale, creativity and productivity and a company workweek of 35 hours a week. A 35-hour week is hardly revolutionary considering that colleges and lots of other companies have had a 35-hour week for decades - France is "going 35" nationally next year - and there are a number of pioneers in the area of "timesizing" instead of downsizing.]

1. American Power [Conversion] plans to shut down Fla. plant, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, C5.
   ...the world's biggest maker of devices that protect computer networks from power surges...to better use its remaining manufacturing facilities....
   [How about cutting 6.4% of your workweek - including your CEO's workweek - instead of 6.4% of your workforce?!]

2. Inso to eliminate 150 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C2.
   BOSTON - ...[A maker of] digital publishing software said...that it would cut...more than 20% of its work force [today's Bos Globe nails this at 23% on p. C5].... Shares...fell....
   [Let's see. A 23% hours cut would give them a workweek of 30.8 hours and a full complement of highly loyal and well-rested people fighting for whatever the company's goals are - strangely unspecified in both the NYT & Bos Globe versions of the likely-lacking, underlying Bloomberg article on this.]

• [The mother of all HMOs has a highly specific news blackout - ]
  Kaiser [Permanente] provides details of departure from northeast, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
  [As in our initial coverage of this shutdown (click here & scan down to 6/19), we get every detail but the most important one, the job loss figures.]

1. Kodak plans [up to 2500] more job cuts but posts profit for quarter - Another round of layoffs for Rochester, by Claudia Deutsch, NYT, C11.
   [2500 fewer customers for Kodak cameras, plus their dependents and sympathizers.]
   The Eastman Kodak Co. said yesterday that it would close some manufacturing operations, cutting as many as 2,500 jobs. Analysts generally applauded the move.... But the mood was somber in Rochester where Kodak is based. Kodak is in the process of eliminating 7,500 jobs there - 1,200 more than it had said it would cut as part of a corporate-wide downsizing program it announced in 1997. At least 1,300 of the new cuts will also be in the Rochester area, where Kkodak is phasing out a huge plant in nearby Elmgrove and closing a film-coating operation.
   ...Some community leaders reacted angrily when Kodak executives met with them at 7 AM yesterday [while] others took the news philosophically, if sadly. "...Some of my colleagues ask, 'When will this tide be stemmed?' and...'How can they do this?'"said...the Mayor of Rochester....
   ['When will this tide be stemmed?' - when American CEOs wake up to the fact that the whole downsizing "strategy" is a disaster for the sustainability of their own markets and the solidity of their own investments. And 'how can they do this?' - by remaining in ignorance of the much less dramatic/traumatic alternative - cutting hours a little for all, not jobs completely for a few, and a few more, and a few more.... They "can do this" until we stop their uncreative "no alternative" thinking.]
   "But" [says the Mayor] "Kodak is one of our largest taxpayers, and there's got to be some short-term pain to get it back to a pre-eminent position."...
   [That is a statement of faith, and negative faith to boot. The Mayor is just whitewashing his salary source, instead of looking around for an alternative, and there's a pretty obvious one in terms of cutting hours for everyone and maintaining jobs (and individual taxpayer liquidity, and local markets) instead of cutting jobs and curtailing all of the above. Kodak's recent track record shows the "short-term pain" is no short term - it keeps getting extended - there's always "another round" of layoffs after 'the very last round" of layoffs. And in a desperate hunt for a silver lining, the Times comes up with - ]
   Actually...Kodak said it would eliminate just 17,700 of the 19,900 jobs it had [threatened] to cut by year-end.... The reduction came from decisions to retain some operations, like film packaging, that Kodak had planned to farm out. But...unexpectedly high severance packages had wiped out reserves for the downsizing program....
   [Don't you love the way these guys always portray their kamekazi strategies as "efficient" and "cost-cutting" when they pay severance costs on the firing side and orientation costs on the hoped-for rehiring side, if any. All these costs are avoided by timesizing, not staffsizing - that is, cutting and adding hours, not jobs, and banking on human versatility and loyalty, rather than on people's ability to survive livelihood loss beyond their control and survive it "philosophically" instead of mail-ordering an MK14 and coming back to get even. Downsizing compared to timesizing is just plain stupid, primitive, brutal and costly, however you slice it.]
   Investors reacted indifferently to Kodak's announcements. Shares...declined 25¢ to $73. \Despite\ benefiting from a robust domestic market for film as well as recovering markets in Asia...several analysts noted that Kodak faces heavy pricing pressure in film, huge investment costs in China, a negative impact from currency translations and persistently sluggish top-line growth....
   [Then maybe it's time Kodak took a page from one of the last surviving American steel companies and copied Nucor's flexibility in wages and hours. Or even looked to the company we always get them mixed up with, Kellogg Cereals, which was the first to adopt the 30-hour workweek (Dec, 1930), to create jobs for the heads of 300 more families in their HQ town, Battle Creek, Mich.  Kodak and Kellogg - how could we ever konfuse them?]

2. Canadian Pacific cuts, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C3.
   An austerity plan announced by the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. will reduce its work force by 10%, or about 1,900 jobs, in the next 18 months [to help it] match the efficiency of its more profitable rival, the Canadian National Railway.... The cuts would be heaviest among unionized workers, but management and administrative jobs will also be reduced....
   [And is the CNR still nationalized?- yet more efficient that the private line?! Whatever, the CP should be cutting 10% of their workweek, not their workforce.]

3. CB Richard Ellis to reorganize businesses and cut jobs, Dow Jones via NYT, C3.
   ...A provider of commercial real estate services said yesterday that it planned to consolidate its nine business lines into three and eliminate 70 managerial positions....

• [Whitewash Alert! - Layoffs in the first half of this year are running 40% above last year's record but NYT- 'It's really good news, honest, no seriously ya gotta believe me, trustme, trustme']
  7/22 Cream in labor market's churn -
  [...but the cream don't matter if the whole churn is sour...]
  Why job losses are rising amid job hunters' nirvana, by Michael Weinstein, NYT, C1.
  [Ah, to be accurate, better make that "skilled job hunters' nirvana" and "nirvana for job hunters in specific industries & cities." Basically, the Times reporter is straining a bit to put a happy face on all this. Even John Challenger gets into the act, probably so they don't arrest him for subversion because of the depressing figures he publishes monthly - ]
  "Job creation will far outdistance automation and job destruction," explained John Challenger, the...chief executive \of\ Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an international outplacement firm [whose] surveys draw...attention because they are the only data available monthly, providing the only instant barometer of corporate layoffs....
  [The NYT reporter then attempts to minimize the scariness of the Challenger figures but succeeds only in maximizing it. It seems that...]
  Large companies...are the only ones that are required by law to announce plant closings and large layoffs ahead of time. Further, some job cuts are achieved through attrition rather than through actual layoffs.
  [Who cares? Layoffs or attrition, those jobs are still gone.]
  The Labor Dept. does collect data every two years on displaced workers - workers who lose their jobs because plants close or move, or because sales fall.
  ["Every two years"?! That's pathetic! We predict they'll be on Challenger's monthly schedule after the next Great Depression. The most important thing in the economy and our Labor Dept. is leaving it in the dark for 23 months at a time. Brilliant. Like we don't have the technology in our vaunted "Information Age"?]
  ...The Government's data, drawn from the entire economy, have shown that the actual number of job losses was significantly greater than those picked up by Challenger's more limited surveys.
  [How much greater, Michael? Michael Weinstein is getting a good salary for doing what his editors tell him, and since the whole point of this article is to report some very scary news without scaring anybody, Mike quickly moves on to - ]
  That is unsurprising. But the Government data also show that job losses have been steadily falling over the last few years, the opposite of the trend in the Challenger data....
  [Then watch far Mike has to stretch to glean this good news - ]
  ...The portion of nonagricultural private workers with at least three years' tenure who were displaced during 1995-96 fell to 3.8% [from] 4.4% [in] 1993-94.
  [So, what happened in agriculture? No answer. What happened in the public sector? No answer. Well, how big a percentage of the total workforce is represented by people with three years on the job in this age of "disposable employees"? Mike later comes up with a scary answer to this one - ]
  Prof. Henry Farber [of Princeton has estimates that] are far higher than the Government's in part because he does not limit his sample to workers who have been working at least three years for their current employers..\.. 13% displaced 1991-93...15% 1993-95...12% 1995-97.
  [Even Farber gets into the spindoctoring line, because after admitting...]
  His data suggest that "somewhat more jobs were lost in the recent expansion than at similar points in the expansion of the late 1980's"
  [he claims...]
  "The reasons are unclear...but the evidence is that workers are now coping better, and a higher fraction can find jobs.
  [Huh? Run that by us again. The learned prof seems to be stating that, because workers are now coping better with job loss, more jobs are being lost now than ten years ago. Honestly, the more eddykayshun some people git, the dumber they talk. Here's a couple more beauties from Prof. Farber - ]
  He says that despite the public focus on downsizing, there has been no substantial decline in job security in the 1990's.
  [We bet that 99% of economists would have said that all the way through the 1920s also, right up until Oct. 28, 1929, the day before the Crash. And if the decline in job security has not been "substantial," where are the wage gains? Why the spreading income gap? Why the bulging prisons? And you wanna call this an "expansion"? Talk about superficial. Of course, with a primary index like the GDP that gives points for self-destructive "productivity," and with the most unscientific "unemployment rate" in the industrialized world, you can claim anything. Here's another beaut - ]
  "Long-term employment is still an important phenomenon in the US economy," he added. He says that 35-40% of workers at least 35 years old have been with their current employers more than 10 years.
  [And what percentage of the total workforce would they represent after 10-15 years when CEOs have been targetting over-50-year-olds for downsizing to avoid paying their pensions? Two years ago the standard (leaky) unemployment rate of over-50-year-olds in high tech alone was double-digit (17%). And if we cut down to only 35-40% of this percentage - a bottom-line figure that Prof. Farber has carefully avoided providing - how can long-term employment still be a large phenomenon in today's economy? But he has protected himself here by using the word "important" phenomenon, not "large," and we would have to agree that however small it gets, long-term employment will always be important in its role as the most anchoring and stabilizing fraction of the workforce.
  [Michael tries to end on the upbeat - ]
  The upshot is that layoffs remain high by historical standards. But job creation remains far higher.
  [What's his evidence for that rank lollypop?]
  ..\..Challenger says announced layoffs are running at about 60,000 a month. That might seem like a lot. But set it against another, truly startling [startlingly reassuring, thinks Mike], number: 13 million workers change their employment status in a typical month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics....
  [God knows why he would bring this up. It's far too general to mean anything except that there's so much "churn" and turmoil out there, it's a wonder someone hasn't adduced it to explain wage stagnation and wealth concentration over the last 30 years. But Mikey tries to make this large neutral (change for changesake) or negative indicator (injecting inefficiency and risk) into a positive by implying that it's magically a gauge of job creation - ]
  Seen in the context of that enormous number of job changes that take place every month [13m], the Challenger numbers [60k] barely register as a blip.
  [Be that as it may, all his reassurances are based on estimates and carefully selected data. With timesizing, we have a design guarantee that in the aggregate, the right amount of employment will be automatically created at points of greatest need throughout the economy in a market-determined, gradual and flexible way. Let's get going on it. Enough of this strained cheerleading for our current, extremely shaky "robust" economy.
  [Until we quit destroying and recreating a few people's entire livelihoods and start destroying and recreating merely a few hours of everyone's workweek, keeping everyone together, employed and all skills in place, we are going to be operating our economy at maybe 10% of potential GDP. Why? - because of the killing effect of job insecurity and economic anxiety on consumer spending, because of the downward multiplier effect (or "divider effect"?), and because of the upward "marginal utility of wealth." In short, a lethal one-two punch: (1) the more consolidation and downsizing of the workforce, the more concentration of wealth, and (2) the more concentration, the less circulation.]

1. After [5,850] layoffs, First Union will hire 2,000 tellers [net 3850 cuts], Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...In March, the bank, based in Charlotte, NC [eliminated] 5,850 jobs, or 7% of its work force, to offset higher spending on businesses including capital markets [another mistake!], capital management and retail delivery. Of that number, fewer than 2% worked in branches..\.. [Now] the First Union Corp. will hire more than 2,000 tellers, after the 6th-largest U.S. bank realized its branch staff was not adequately serving customers. A...spokeswoman, Allison Rash, said the bank had been short by about 1,000 tellers for several months. The bank decided last week that it needed to hire another 1,000. There is high turnover rate among tellers, she said [no kidding!]....
   [And no thanks to their yoyo employment policies. Imagine the dollar costs involved in lsoing nearly 6K employees or 7% of your workforce, never mind the header in employee morale, loyalty and productivity. Imagine the costs in administration and startup time in hiring in another 2000. And these morons call this "efficiency" and "cost cutting"? What a joke.
   [In the future, a bank in this situation will simply cut its workweek by 7% (eg: to 37.2 hrs/wk), keep everyone employed&loyal&motivated, and crosstrain without pay any who wanted to continue working the extra 2.8 hrs/wk for other positions in the organization. Then when over a third of that number was needed again in the branches, the future bank would simply re-expand its workweek an hour to 38.2 hrs/wk and offer incentives to employees willing to transfer to branches. All the cost and carnage of firing and rehiring is avoided. We call it timesizing, not staffsizing.]

2. Labor unrest in metals, by Donald McNeil, NYT, C4.
   ...In a...labor-management dispute in South Africa's metals industry, the Oryx Gold Mine was denied a court order forbidding a strike by 4,000 workers over plans to lay off 600 because of falling gold prices.

3. American Retail Group Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Atlanta, owner of Eastern Mountain Sports, the 2nd-largest US outdoor specialty retailer, plans to close its Uptons department store chain to focus on specialty retail operations.
   [And the number of jobs lost is ...?]

4. Centrica to sell stores, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   Britain's dominant supplier and marketer of natural gas...said it would...close its 243 retail stores [and] continue to supply cookers and other products that had been handled at its stores through home-shopping connections.
   [And the number of jobs lost is ...?]

5. 60 Mass. hospitals face $724m cut in Medicare funds, by Richard Knox, Bos Globe, B1.
   ...Community hospital officials said they will have to cut medical services and lay off [how many?] workers if Congress refuses to modify the cuts....

1. Albemarle Corp., New York Times, p. B14.
   ...Richmond, a large maker of specialty chemicals used in flame retardants and pharmaceuticals, said it would cut 74 workers to reduce costs and increase profit.

2. Cooper Industries job cuts, Bloomberg via NYT, B14.
   ...The manufacturer of Halo lighting fixtures said today that it would lay off an undisclosed number of workers as it consolidates its power tools and hand tools divisions to cut costs and raise profits. The tools unit...will be based in Lexington, SC.... Most job cuts would come in administrative functions because the manufacturing operations are so different. The unit will consist of 59 plants in North and South America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

1. BP Amoco says it will cut annual costs by $4 billion - A three-year goal that would double previously planned reductions, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C4.
   LONDON - BP Amoco PLC, the newly formed [8/15/98] petroleum giant, announced ambitious [don't you mean "self-shrinking"] plans [yesterday] to cut annual costs by $4 billion over the next three years - double the previous target.... The cuts almost certainly mean that the company will exceed its previously announced goal of cutting 10,000 jobs from the 98,000 employee work force, [many] in the United States.... BP Amoco officials would not specify how many additional jobs might be cut..\..
   [No of course not. They may be self-mutilating but they ain't STUPID. Nowadays they only boast about exact numbers in the clubrooms of Wall Street. But let's see. Double 10,000 totals 20,000, so we ain't talkin' chickenfeed. Anyway, the Wall Street boys are already rubbing their hands in glee as their bubbleburst takes another big step towards "Activate!" - ]
   "We thought it was going to be hard for them to do anything beyond the promises they had already made," said Adam Sieminski, an oil analyst with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown.
   ["Promises they had already made"!  Like, "They promised us they would further heighten the insecurity and weaken the leverage of ordinary people so our Wall Street mega-fridge can "ice" even more of the buying power that would otherwise have stayed in those teeming ant hills - but, yum yum, they're going to REALLY scare the *#!@$ out of them!"
   [Unfortunately this means that there's that much less for Wall St. to invest in - to invest in that's market-supported, since we've just shrunk the buying power of ordinary people who actually spend it, and increased the buying power of mega-rich investors who don't actually spend it - they are so comparatively few and they're SO overloaded with super-astronomical paper profits that they just don't have TIME.  Hence Timesizing, to balance the distribution of time, not by arbitrary redistribution but by market-determined reinvestment...
   [Otherwise, we continue the Great Money Compactor, and oil prices weaken further because there aren't as many ordinary people in all the teeming ant hills who can afford to travel so far in so many cars. And just behold the Compactor at work already in this one industry - Big (or formerly Big) Oil.... "BP's workforce now [ 8/15/98] has fewer than half the 112,000 people it had in 1992." And that's just BP alone before the merger with Amoco. Now the two of them are doing another merger for $27b with Atlantic Richfield. And that's just one merger stream in the oil industry. Here are a couple more - ]
   •  The Exxon Corp. and the Mobil Corp. announced an $87 billion merger deal in December [12/02/98], which would create the world's largest oil company [and up to 30,000 layoffs per 11/30/98 story].
   •  Just last week, Total Fina SA of France began a $43 billion hostile takeover offer for another big French petroleum business, Elf Aquitaine SA..\..
   [And that's just one industry. As you can tell from our mergers pages, the Great Compactor is working overtime in almost all industries.]
   Many large oil companies have concluded that the only way to remain profitable to is to combine.... Last year, oil prices were languishing at $10 a barrel. Although prices have since nearly doubled to $19 a barrel, the measures BP Amoco announced today were aimed partly at preparing the company for any new shocks.
   [Preparing for shocks by cutting your consumer base and making them more likely?! It ever amazes us how smart we humans think we are while we're being incredibly self-destructive. You can't prepare for shocks by making yourself more rigid by taking on debt and shrinking (and incidentally accelerating and magnifying the shocks). You can only prepare for shocks by making yourself more flexible.
   [Probably the most flexible company in the world is Nucor, one of America's last-surviving steel companies. Why? Because it has a very low baseline in time and money, dba worktime & wages (a 3-day workweek and an $8/hour wage when there is no business) and maximum flexibility in both dimensions (it can expand quickly to a 7-day workweek and as much as a $22/hour wage when the steel contracts lurch in). If this kind of worktime flexibility was extended across even a whole region, let alone a whole economy, the spread of employment-earnings-spendings-markets would flatten the sinewave of boom&bust and allow all of us to fluctuate below 4 days a week and falling.]

1. Sikorsky says it needs to trim costs, cut 1,100 jobs [13.6%], AP via Bos Globe, D5.
   ...most of them in Connecticut.... The company...has its headquarters in Stratford and has 8,100 employees worldwide.... All but about 1,000 of Sikorsky's employees are in Conn..\.. [It] also said it plans to close some of its 10 offices and plants in the state [as] it continues a decade-long shift from reliance on US government contracts toward commercial and international markets..\..
   The company said it planned to offer early retirement packages for salaried and hourly employees who are 55 and older and have at least 10 years of service.... "We're hoping to allay layoffs," [co. spokesman Wm.] Tuttle said. "We're puttting the emphasis on packages right now."...
   Before yesterday's announcement, Sikorsky had cut about 500 jobs this year. The company also slashed jobs in the previous four years: in 1995, 825 workers were cut; in 1996, 462; in 1997, 230; and in 1998, 276 [totalling 1,793 in those four years]..\..
   Sikorsky is a division of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp.... Other UT divisions have seen layoffs and job cuts as the defense industry softened. Its jet engine division, Pratt & Whitney, last year [eliminated] 2,000 positions.
   [Sikorsky should be cutting 13.6% of its workweek, not its workforce, for a new full-employment workweek of 34.6 hrs/wk. Like VW and Nucor....]

2. Perkin-Elmer cuts [350 jobs] 12% of work force, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...[The former] Perkin-Elmer Analytical Instruments was acquired in June for $425 million by the EG&G Corp....
   [Perkin-Elmer should be cutting 12% of their workweek, not their workforce, for a new full-employment workweek of 35.2 hrs/wk. "Timesizing, Not Downsizing."]

1. AmSouth plans to cut 1,400 jobs after bank acquisition, Bloomberg via NYT, p. C3 (NE).
   [Again the lethal link from takeover to job&market loss.]

2. Loehmann's seeks [bankruptcy] court OK to close 14 stores, Dow Jones via Boston Globe, E7.
   ...filed for Chapter 11 in May...[will still] operate 55 stores....

3. Last Indianapolis News edition will be Oct. 1, AP via Bos Globe, E2.
   ...The 130-year-old [evening] newspaper, the oldest in Indianapolis and one that billed itself as "the great Hoosier daily," had seen its circulation dwindle to 33,175...compared to 111,000 a decade ago.... In comparison...the morning Indianapolis Star has a daily circulation of 235,790.... The shutdown of the News reflects a trend in daily newspaper publishing [and consumer market stagnation, ed.]. In 1998...30 evening dailies converted to morning publication.

1. UnionBancal Corp., NYT, B3.
   ...San Francisco, a bank holding company that is majority-owned by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., said it would cut about 500 jobs, or 5% of its staff of 9,800.
   [UnionBancal should be avoiding fueling economic meltdown by cutting 5% of its workweek (40 to 38) instead of its workforce, and keeping everybody employed - " timesizing, not downsizing"!]

2. R.I. company to lay off 60, by Ronald Rosenberg, Bos Globe, F1.
   CytoTherapeutics Inc. of Lincoln, R.I. yesterday said it will dismiss 60 full-time employees - 75% of its work force - and sharply downsize its research and development operations following a [London-based partner firm's] decision last month to stop funding a...joint...project.... The pending layoffs...prompted the R.I. Partnership for Science and Technology [a business-government partnership for jobs?] to demand [re]payment of $2.6 million [in job subsidies?] claiming CytoTherapeutics is in default on its [separate] funding agreement, which began in 1989....
   [Just like Raytheon and Fidelity in Massachusetts, and as with them, we say to governments and government agencies, Don't EVER bribe companies to create jobs. Give 'em tax breaks only for spreading around the existing (but diminishing) work more evenly so they're cushioning the downturn, not aggravating it - " timesizing."]

3. Hospital lays off 20% of middle managers - Newton-Wellesley moves to offset projected loss of $13.5m, by Heather Kamins, Bos Globe, F1.
   Newton-Wellesley Hospital this week laid off 20% of its middle-management staff in an attempt to curb growing financial woes.... Cuts were made throughout the middle-management level of the hospital, including eight of 40 department directors who were laid off this week....
   [Brilliant, Heather! You get through 14 column inches without telling us exactly how many jobcuts you're talking about! Or do you mean "cuts...consisting of 8 of 40 dept. dirs." instead of "cuts including 8 of 40 dept. dirs."?
   [See also: On 3/20, Mass. General Hospital downsized 130 positions and on 4/07, Brigham and Women's downsized 110 positions.]

1. Mexican steel layoffs, by Rick Wills, NYT, C4.
   Mexico's largest steel manufacturer, Altos Hornos de Mexico, said it planned to lay off 25% of its white-collar staff and freeze the salaries of workers who stay. Besides the layoff of 2,000 workers...the company plans to raise at least $30 million from sales of assets unrelated to production. But there is no word on how Altos Hornos will rework its $1.8 billion debt, on which it defaulted in April.

2. SmithKline to cut 800 jobs at five antibiotics plants, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   SmithKline Beacham PLC, Europe's fifth-biggest drug maker, said yesterday that it planned to cut 800 jobs, or about 1.4% of its work force, as it consolidates its antibiotics manufacturing operations. SmithKline...plans to end production at five plants in Spain, France, Mexico, New Jersey and Pennsylvania...to compete better....

3. Lockheed Martin says it is combining two businesses, Bloomberg via NY Times, C4.
   ...The world's biggest military contractor is combining two businesses in Florida and Texas into a new missiles and fire control division to compete better for new markets. The move is expected to cut costs by eliminating jobs.... The combined unit has 8,000 employees.... The number of job cuts was not specified.

4. Disney to join operations of studio and ABC units, by Bill Carter, NYT, C6.
   ...The new [integrated] unit would be led by co-chairmen: Lloyd Braun...and Stuart Bloomberg.... The new arrangement sets up the unusual [and conflict-of-interest] situation of a studio's being directly incorporated into a network while it sells programs to competing networks....
   [Why do we have to relearn the same basic business lessons over and over again? Aren't the business schools teaching the basics to these morons any more?]
   Mr. Braun said the new unit...should also create economies of scale...and eliminate redundancies. For example, both the studio and the network...have had casting offices, business affairs offices, and comedy...and drama development executives. All those jobs will be combined at significant cost saving.... [Why? - so Michael Eisner can get an additional $10 million in his already unspendable compensation?]
   Much of the consolidation would be accomplished through attrition, not layoffs....
   [How much?]
   But one senior executive at another production company said, "If I were a writer, I think I'd be scratching my head about how all this is going to work."

1. After takeover, DuPont to close 6 plants and cut [1300] jobs, AP via NYT, C3.
   ...in the wake of its $1.8 billion takeover in March of Herberts, [previously] a leading European manufacturer of automotive and industrial paints [but now a demoralized mess]. The consolidation will eliminate 500 manufacturing positions and 800 corporate, marketing and staff positions. Production will be shifted to the remaining 40 plants. DuPont formed its Performance Coatings unit after the acquisition of Herberts, making it the world's leading manufacturer of automotive coatings and the third-largest coatings supplier....
   [That's really great, DuPont, you're so awesome and big, - and so dumb in cutting jobs, morale, markets, and - just you watch - productivity. You could easily have retrained and cross-trained and reassigned, and cut hours if necessary to spread the work and avoid cutting your own best market, your own employees. But no, big dumb Deathwish DuPont wants to be just like Rambo and is gonna end up like Baby Huey.]

2. Sony is shutting North American wireless phone unit, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
   ...and dismissing about 200 employees in engineering, sales and marketing.... The business has "had a a tough time staying competitive in that area".... The business, Sony Digital Telecommunications of America, operates as part of Sony Electronics Inc., which has more than 25,000 North American employees....
   [But not for long....]

3. [Fatal for a museum director - lost his 'class.']
   Boston museum's restructuring sows fear among U.S. curators, by Judith Dobrzynski, NYT, B1 (NE).
   [But then, that's the whole point, eh. If only the rich read history and saw how suicidal it's been for them to sow fear - and reap hatred.]
   Since Malcom Rogers took over as its director five years ago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been riding pretty high. Attendance has jumped, many exhibitions have won praise, and the museum's once-precarious finances have been shored up.
   [Same pattern as when they stretched too far to fish up John Silber to 'rescue' Boston University. "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." But it sometimes takes a while for No Class to manifest.]
   But a sweeping restructuring that Mr. Rogers [how different from the original - how like the Roger of 'Roger and Me'] announced on June 25 has turned him into something of a villain to many in the art world. He merged several departments, eliminating 18 positions and sending two senior curators packing that afternoon.
   [Our italics - it's these little touches that reveal the monster under the Armani threads. Compare Robert "Destructor" Palmer of the now-taken-over DEC ("Digital Equipment Corpse"?).]
   He also created 20 positions, including those of photography curator and chief financial officer. He will add six curatorial planning and project managers and four slots in conservation and collection management, bringing the museum's staff to 1,043....
   [Dass right, 30 new folks who really know who's massa aroun' heah on dee ol' plantashun.]
   William Truetter, a senior curator at the National Museum of American Art in Washington...and many other museum professionals see the move...as a centralization of power that devalues curators, making them pawns to administrators who will stress bottom-line considerations rather than intellectual content when decisions are make on programming.... Patricia Hills, an art historian at Boston University...said "...Will curators be able to be scholars or will they just be guides in a theme park?"
   Even some who accept Mr. Rogers's rationale complain that he based his decisions on personal relationships and treated the dismissed employees shabbily, giving them just a few hours to clean out their desks. In a protest letter, David Hall, a professor of religion at Harvard University, termed the dismissals "vulgar and decidely unprofessional." Others, citing similar layoffs at corporations, said they worried about morale. Mr. Rogers, a Briton whose curatorial expertise is in British portraiture, made no apologies....
   [A slimey 'limey' - something that's not easy for us anglophile Canajuns to accept. Well, that's what you get when you hire people for their toff English accents, an all-too-frequent occurrence in New England. Now with a terminally NICE Canadian-accented director, however....]

1. Pratt & Whitney plans to lay off 117 workers, AP via Bos Globe, C9.
   [The] jet engine maker...has announced the layoffs of 117 hourly workers in Connecticut. An additional 187 workers are "taking advantage of" [our quotes, ed.] an early retirement package, the company said. The cuts come a week after Pratt announced it would close its plant in Rocky Hill, Conn., eliminating another 54 jobs.... The layoffs are "volume related," in response to the overall downturn in the aerospace industry.... The number of those taking early retirement did not reach high enough levels to avoid job cuts. Pratt...last year announced it would eliminate 2,000 jobs companywide, about half in Conn....
   [So let's get this straight. GE loses a contract to Pratt and uses it as an excuse for laying off 200 people in Lynn, Mass. (3/3). Now Pratt is cutting (117+187+54=) 358 jobs in Connecticut anyway. Do we always have to wait till the stock market crashes before these braindead CEOs realize there's a connection between their employees and their markets?! Can't we learn from past disaster for once?]

2. Job cuts at Respironics, Bloomberg via NYT, C6 (NE).
   [A maker of] medical devices to treat breathing disorders said today that it would cut its work force 10% and that its fiscal Q4 profit would miss analysts' estimates. The company, which has about 2,000 employees, said it planned to sell or discontinue some product lines....
   [Should be cutting 10% of their workweek and maintaining their own and national markets, not 10% of their workforce and adding yet another to the economy's "death by a thousand cuts."]

3. EFTC Corp., NYT, C4.
   ...Denver, an electronics company plans to lay off 150 employees, about 6% of its work force, and sell its repair and warranty-service business to Jabil Circuit Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla., for $30 million....
   [Should be 6% of its workweek, not its workforce....]

1. Ace completes deal for Cigna unit and plans cutbacks [of 1500 jobs (15%)], Reuters via NYT, B3 (NE).

2. Shaw's, union agree on [375] layoffs [at 3 divested union-covered stores but, of the 375,] Senior employees could get transfers, by Chris Reidy, Bos Globe, F1.
   ...At a new conference earlier this week, Shaw's expressed hope that the [total of] roughly 1,000 workers at the [total of] 10 divested stores would be offered jobs by the stores' new owners. But even if that happens, employees could be out of work for a few weeks or more as stores are remodeled by new owners....
   [This story also reveals the impotence and acquiescence of today's unions, and how unimaginative and unstrategic they've become since the days when the AFL fought for the Black-Connery 30-hour workweek bill in the 1930s (and finally gave up).]

1. Dupont to revamp farm farm chemicals unit and cut 800 jobs, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...or about 15% of the workers involved in the production of insecticides and herbicides. Dupont said it...anticipated a one-time charge in Q3 to pay for the layoffs. The announcement came less than a month after DuPont said it would curtail polyester production, laying off 14% of the workers - about 1,400 - in its Dacron, polyester and polyester resins businesses.
   [A few jobs here, a few jobs there, again and again, on and on, and eventually you downsize your own markets and induce depression. The solution has always been obvious and often picked up by a minority of firms in every recession = cut hours, not jobs. Here DuPont should be lopping 14% off its workweek and keeping everyone employed, instead of 14% off its workforce. That would keep their skill set intact for any recovery in demand. It would maintain morale and heighten, not destroy, loyalty, and it would probably increase efficiency because of more rested, focused and prioritized employees. After all, we're talking about a (40x86%=) 34.4 hour workweek here, on par with the latest in Europe. BurmaShave? No, merely Timesizing, not downsizing.]

2. R.I firm to cut jobs, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, C5.
   Brown & Sharpe Mfg Co, a maker of measuring devices, said it will cut 125 jobs and take a pretax charge of $11 million to pare costs in its largest division, measuring systems....
   [It's going to cost them if they downsize or timesize, either way. But one way they damage general markets including their own, and the other they maintain them. One way, CEOs are completely unaffected by the problems, because their astronomical compensation remains intact, while the other way, everyone sacrifices together, starting at the top. One way induces recession and depression by (at least in the immediate term) maintaining earnings among the few top earner/spenders while reducing them among the many lower earner/spenders - who actually spend a much much higher percentage of their incomes. Result? Lower overall spending, stagnant markets, and CEOs "forced" into more cuts. Can you say "death spiral"? [So it costs whether you do it right or you do it wrong. Let's see more CEOs smartening up and doing it right.]
   Last year, Brown & Sharpe rejected a...buyout proposal from Thermo Electron Corp, saying the best way to to build value was to remain independent....
   [Well they got that right, at least. Let's see them get the next step right as well, by taking a leaf from VW, Nucor, Lincoln Electric... and cutting hours, not jobs. In the long run, this is not optional if we want any markets left.]

3. Suiza Foods Corp., NY Times, C4.
   ...Dallas, a dairy manufacturer and the new parent of Broughton Foods Co., Marietta, Ohio, plans to close Broughton's Charleston, W.Va., dairy plant later this year, idling about 120 workers.
   [Aha, another new "parent" who can't wait to kill its stepchild.]