Timesizing® Associates

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Downsizings Aug. 1-15/99
[Commentary] ©1998,1999 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

[Break out the black crepe, spread the ashes, lower the flag to halfmast...]
8/15/99 Kellogg to cut [550] jobs, close most of plant, AP via Boston GLobe, p. A6.
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. - Kellogg Co. announced yesterday it would close most of its hometown cereal plant and cut about 550 jobs, in its latest effort to revive sagging earnings. Kellogg, the third-largest employer in this community of 56,000, said it would offer assistance to workers whose jobs are eliminated. Kellogg's restructuring is expected to result in a charge of $100-150 million this quarter.
[The humane founder, W.K. Kellogg, is rolling over in his grave and cursing today's top management to the end of their days for their lack of strategy, imagination and vision - when he and his president, Lewis Brown, showed them how nearly 69 years ago.  They created 300 jobs in 1930 by cutting the workweek from 40 to 30 and pay to 35.  Pay was back at the 40-hour level within 5 years because the 30-hour week (four 6-hour shifts instead of three 8-hour ones) worked out so well. The whole story is in Ben Hunnicutt's 1996 book, "Kellogg's Six-Hour Day" published by Temple University.]

8/13  6 Downsizings Reported (total 2,597 additional + unspecified) -

1. Texaco plans to increase number of jobcuts [1100, from 1400] to 2,500, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The 3rd-largest U.S. oil company has increased the number of jobs it will cut to...10% of its work force, from the 1,400 it estimated last year. Most of the jobs will be cut by the end of the month, Texaco said in a filing with the SEC.... The company took a 2nd-quarter charge of $67 million, largely for severance costs for the dismissals, voluntary departures and early retirements. Texaco had about 24,600 employees at the end of last year. It announced jobs cuts in December, citing the fall in oil prices that began in October 1997....
   [It seems that in the primitive current state of corporate accounting, there is no allowance for the aggregate need for markets - human shoppers. Every CEO assumes that he can cut as many shoppers as he wants, without reducing the aggregate amount of shopping, and in Texaco's case, driving to and from the shopping centers using hopefully Texaco gas. But how many other companies had a bigger workforce at the end of last year than now? Probably many, while some few have more now. How long will it take to bring the economy down? In the 1920's they did it in a decade after the war and the flue epidemic had rebalanced the supply and demand of employees.]

2. Liberty Mutual Group says it will eliminate 1,500 jobs [i.e., 700 more than they denied last Fri.], AP via NYT, C4.
   ...or 4% of its work force, and reduce expenses by more than $150 million by the first quarter of 2000 as it realigns its commercial insurance operation. Liberty Mutual's president and chief executive, Edmund Kelly, attributed the cuts to industrywide stagnation....
   [Oh yeah? Well, we attribute the industrywide stagnation to the fact that Edmund Kelly and his income bracket are cutting all the shoppers (millions of people who spend 85-99% of their admittedly small incomes) and not themselves (thousands of people who spend only 1-15% of their HUGE incomes). In short, they've got us - and themselves - into an economic death spiral. Liberty Mutual should be cutting hours 4% for everyone at their company (38.4-hr workweek) and keeping everyone employed.]

3. Superior Telecomm to close 3 plants and cut 469 jobs [6%], Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   ...The top U.S. supplier of copper wire and cable for telecommunications, said yesterday that it Superior Essex unit would close three electrical wire manufacturing plants...in Pauline, Kan., Glendale, Ariz., and Tiffin, Ohio. The closing's complete a previously announced consolidation within Superior's electrical wire segment.
   [Superior Telecomm should be cutting 6% of their workweek - to 37.6 hr/wk.]

4. Potash Corp.,, NYT, C4.
   ...Saskatoon, Sask., North America's biggest fertilizer maker, will shut shut 5 U.S. plants employing 328 people to cut costs by about $20 million a year.
   [...Instead of cutting hours & keeping everyone employed and markets up.]

5. Getronics sees few job cuts at Wang Global, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, C5.
   Getronics NV's top executives said they plan to leave most former employees of Wang Global in place as the Dutch company takes over the Billerica-based computer services firm. Amsterdam-based Getronics arranged in May to buy Wang for $2 billion in cash, and Cees van Luijk, the acquirer's chief executive, said in an interview that an ongoing integration program wouldn't displace many employees.... Wang employed 20,300 at the time of the acquisition while Getronics had 12,500 workers. The combined company now has about 34,208 employees, including about 8,000 former Wang workers throughout the United States.... Cuts have been made to Wang's former headquarters staff of 80, he said. Only 5 have been relocated to the Netherlands, although others have received local reassignments....
   [Another case of merger-related downsizing.]

6. General Mills buys Gardetto's Bakery of Milwaukee [a family-owned company], AP via NYT, C4.
   ...General Mills will continue production at the Gardetto's plant...and expects to retain most of the company's 235 employees....
   ["Most," but not "all." A family-owned bakery & they couldn't negotiate to protect all their employees from layoff?! So, yet another case of merger-related downsizing.]

1. Reports: Pratt & Whitney mulls moving workers to Conn., AP via Boston Globe, D3.
   EAST HARTFORD, Conn. - Jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney is considering closing its plant in West Palm Beach, Fla. and moving thousands of jobs to Cononecticut, according to published reports.... The Hartford Courant reported yesterday that up to 3,000 jobs could be moved....
   The Courant...said the company also plans to spin off or subcontract much more of its manufacturing, removing up to 3,000 employees from its Connecticutt payroll. The jobs moving to the state would largely be engineers and technical workers; those being considered for cuts from the payroll would largely be hourly production workers, according to the report..\..
   The Journal Inquirer of Manchester reported Monday that the Air Force warned Pratt last week it was concerned about the possible closure of its Florida military engineering and research plant. The move could imperil Pratt's multibillion dollar engine work for both the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter programs, the Air Force said in an...Aug. 4 letter...signed by Lieut. Col. Gail C. Allen, who is in charge of the government oversight office at the West Palm plant. The possible closure of Pratt's West Palm plant raises questions about the future of Sikorsky Aircraft's Florida operation, which is located next door....
   Both Pratt and Sikorsky are divisions of Hartford's United Technologies Corp. Pratt has about 4,700 employees at its sprawling West Palm plant.
   [And today's Big CEOs shrug off the US Air Force and US national security anyway. They're bored, and carelessly intent on really Big Stuff - "globalization," Wall Street, and their immediate numbers games.]

2. BP Amoco posts profit, plans more job cuts, AP via Bos Globe, D2.
   [The NY Times has hidden this story on C22 under the happyhappy headline, "Oil price rise and profit lift BP profit." Lord, we might as well be reading the cheerleading of the Wall Street Journal! They do add that "already, 12,500 jobs have been eliminated" - 2500 more than already announced! Plus some dumb analyst's remark that the company's "results are sparkling."]
   BP Amoco PLC boosted its quarterly operating profit by 14% and announced plans to cut 4,500 more jobs this year than originally expected.
   [And if there's any doubt about the downsizing-takeover connection, here's a double...]
   The company, formed by British Petroleum PLC's purchase last year of Chicago-based Amoco Corp., is in the process of absorbing Atlantic Richfield Corp.
   [And the big hit in the background?]
   As part of its cost-cutting efforts, the company plans to reduce its work force by 14,500 people by the end of the year. The company's original plan, outlined in February, called for 10,000 job cuts this year.
   [Ancient Chinese called this, "throwing out babee with bathwater." Today's CEOs , bored stupid, are cutting their markets along with their costs. How to change this suicide strategy into a win-win for everyone? Cut hours for all (including CEOs), not job for a few, and a few more, and a few more.... Even if you start off by prorating pay for everyone (including CEOs), you'll reverse the current deepening labor glut, raise wages and restore markets. How to offset inflation? Centrifuging wealth away from the Black Hole of CEO pockets is one way this approach does it. The other way is that it allows only those with deflationary incentive to work overtime. We call it Timesizing.]

3. Silicon Graphics expects layoffs and a revamping - Products intended to broaden sales have not taken off, by Lawrence Fisher, NYT, C8.
   SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 - Silicon Graphics Inc., which has been mired in losses and dwindling market share for much of the last four years, plans to lay off 1,000 to 1,500 people, or up to 15% of its work force, and sell or spin off several businesses, including the Cray Research line of supercomputers....
   [Should be cutting 15% of its work week instead. Our way, survival, like Nucor and VW. Their way, suicide.]

4. Slumping sales cause Oakwood Homes to close plants, Reuters, NYT, C4.
   ...The largest U.S. retailer of manufactured housing said yesterday that it had reduced its work force by 695 workers this summer because of slumping demand. The company closed its factory in Ennis, Tex., and production has ceased at its plants in Richfield, NC, and Moultrie, Ga. Those sites employ 545. Earlier, the company reduced its work force at its Greensboro, NC, headquarters and at factories in Fort Morgan, Colo., and Albany, Ore., by 150 workers. Oakwood said it closed the plants because sales had dropped and competition had increased.
   [There it is, the key symptom of depression = slumping demand. Sales drop and competition increases as more businesses desperately squabble for a smaller pool of active spending power, as more and more millionaires are created, who of course have neither the time nor the need to buy stuff.]

5. Children's shoe maker plans to cut 5% of work force, Reuters, NYT, C4.
   The Stride Rite Corp, a maker of children's shoes, said yesterday that it would cut about 125 jobs, or 5% of its work force, in a revamping of its central office.... The reorganization trims its administrative staff by about 13%. Stride Rite employs about 2,400 to 2,500 people over all.
   [So far, so bad. Now a glimmer of hope...]
   The company also said it would double its stock repurchase program, increasing it by two million shares. In the last 3 years, the company has bought back $44 million of its stock....
   [Well that will eventually get it free of the morons of Wall Street, but meanwhile, it should be cutting 5% of its workweek, not its workforce, and observing Lincoln Electric's fundamental rule, "Everyone sacrifices together, starting at the top."]

1. Paint maker to close 23 work sites and cut 730 jobs, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   RPM Inc., maker of Rust-Oleum paints, said yesterday that it would close 23 plants and eliminate 730 jobs, or about 10% of the work force, to make itself more efficient.
   [Spindoctoring 101:  Note "the" work force, not even "its" work force. If a company is no longer all its employees, then what is it? Its top executives, however insulated, and its shareholders, however transient and invisible?]
   It did not specify which plants would close.
   [Note "which plants would close," not "which plants it would close."]
   The announcement comes as the maker of specialty chemicals and coatings announced record profits of $94.5 million of sales of $1.74 billion for the [fiscal] year that ended on May 31.
   [When corporate strategists are so obsessed with the immediate numbers game that not even record profits can induce them to reinvest in their own markets, via their employees, you can be sure that no markets , however strong right now, will be able to last.]
   RPM said it would post a pretax charge of $45 million, or 24¢ a share, in [its] first quarter from closing the plants, a move expected to save $23 million before taxes, or 13¢ a share.
   [How can we redesign the corporate tax laws to stop allowing tax savings for behavior that's destroying us - our economy, our markets, our whole future? These morons should be spreading their whole company's success to their whole company by cutting hours by 10%, not jobs - like Lincoln Electric, VW or Nucor.
   [The idea that we can retain our all-important domestic markets simply by highlighting 310,000-job "surges" and a "three-decade low" unemployment rate of 4.3% (8/8 Bos Globe E4) - while constantly converting more secure higher-wage&benefit jobs into less secure lower-wage&benefit jobs and early retirements - is strictly from "Cloudcuckooland."  How many janitors does the New Economy need?!]

2. Massachusetts Mutual Life cutting 551 jobs, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...in Springfield, Mass., and Hartford through early retirement. The company offered early retirement to more than 700 employees this summer as part of an internal expense management move, said Eustis Walcott, vice president for corporate communications. He said the number of acceptances was in the range the company had expected [which was...551??? - too much left for us to fill in here].  Mass. Mutual, which merged in 1996 with the former Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, based in Hartford, now has more than 3,700 workers at its Springfield headquarters and more than 1,100 in Hartford.
   [Let's see, 1100+3700=4800; 551/4800 = 11.4%. A 35.4-hour corporate workweek would have taken care of this without the costs of early retirement, the agism, and the waste of those skills.]

3. EMC buys Data General - Storied firm to be acquired for $1.05b; some layoffs seen, by Ross Kerber, Boston Globe, D1.
   ...Some layoffs are likely to result from the purchase, EMC said, perhaps from among Data General's work force. Data General employs 5,000 workers, 1,800 of them based in Westborough and Southborough. But [EMC chief executive Michael] Ruettgers noted that overall demand for computer storage systems continues to grow, adding that "I don't think you'll see significant layoffs."  Rüttgers also said that EMC expects to hire 1,500 people soon, mainly in Massachusetts.  EMC now employs 11,200 worldwide, including 4,600 in the state.
   [Talk about schizophrenic. Talk about partitioned thinking.  Make up your mind, executive class, whether you like employees (and spending and markets), or whether they're just costs to be cut.  And if it's just inflation you're trying to control, a far better way to control inflation is to harness the deflationary (charitable/volunteer) impulse throughout society which today is wasted on unaccountable bandaiding, and design a channel for it to counterbalance inflationary incentive, which today is checked only by fear, job insecurity, and economic anxiety.  Timesizing offers such a design.]

1. 2,900 jobs in jeopardy, Bloomberg via NYT, B2.
   Placer Dome Inc., the gold producer based in Vancouver, BC, and its partner Western Areas Ltd., plan to dismiss as many as 2,900 workers, or 40% of the work force, at their joint venture near Johannesburg because of lower gold prices.
   [A perfect opportunity for timesizing, not downsizing!]

2. Cahners planning to cut 300 workers [7%] - Eyes move from Newton to N.Y., by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, F1.
   ...Cahners Business Information, publisher of Variety and 127 other business trade publications, is laying off 300 employees and is also considering a relocation of its headquarters...as part of a broader cost-cutting effort that includes consolidation of vast real estate holdings as far west as Denver.\.. Cahners employs about 580 people at its Newton headquarters, but [it] has a bigger work force - roughly 750 - at its offices in Manhattan and across the Hudson River in New Jersey. The layoffs would affect 27 employees in Newton.... The reduction in Cahner's workforce of 300 employees amounts to a 7% work force reduction..\..
   [Hey, if the economy is really so great, how come this business publisher is acting so worried?!]
   Cahners' revenues declined by 2% in the first six months of 1999, to $442 million, compared with the same period last year, due largely to turmoil that has hit industries in which some of the company's biggest advertisers are involved, especially manufacturing and semiconductors, said Paul Richardson, senior VP of Reed Elsevier, which owns Cahners.
   [Well, braindead "free" trade has killed off American manufacturing, we all know that, but high-tech semiconductors? Of course, as soon as you hear the word "turmoil," you KNOW they're going to blame the "Asian contagion"...]
   "A number of advertisers were Asian-based, and we all know what happened in Southeast Asia," Richardson said....
   [And in Russia, and Brazil, and perhaps Argentina, and maybe western Massachusetts outside the 495 beltway, and possibly throughout the rest of "booming" American economy with the exception of the Silicon Valley (now expanded to include the Silicon Mountains, Silicon Desert & Silicon Alley) and the seven other regions where it has outposts: Seattle, LA, Austin, Boston, New York, D.C., and San Francisco's "Multimedia Gulch."]
   Cahners also has magazine offices in Chicago, Denver, Philadephia and Radnor, Pa. [Radnor, Pa??].... "It's very expensive to have so many different locations"...said [Margaret Partridge, Cahners' spokeswoman].
   [But then, news services have always had lots of different locations - so they can report "on location." Watch. The next article will blame the Information Highway which obviates the need to be "on location" for accurate reporting. Anything but admit to spreading cracks in our magnificent economic edifice, which only sharing the vanishing work will reseal. This is the "permanent prosperity" of the 1920s revisited.]

1. [Ironies abound...]
   Insurer planning layoffs - Liberty Mutual denies rumors 800 to lose jobs...confirms layoffs, not numbers, by Heather Kamins, Boston Globe, C1.
   ...The nation's largest workers' compensation insurer [started] laying off employees...about six weeks ago..\..as part of a national effort to contain costs and consolidate its operations. As many as 800 workers may receive pink slips, according to several former employees who asked that their names be withheld.
   [So the employees' friend is gettin' hostile.]
   Employees said the layoffs were undertaken after Liberty Mutual acquired a number of smaller insurance firms in the United States and overseas.
   [Again, the takeover-downsizing connection.]
   ...One former company attorney said, "They said they didn't have the workload to support all the people they had."... Workers' compensation insurance, which provides benefits to workers injured on the job, is becoming an increasingly competitive industry with significant cost pressures, Cusolito said.... Moody's analyst Bill Wilt said..."In general, workers' compensation...has been an increasingly challenging way to make money.".\..
   [That's funny, we thought the official line was that employment was up. If employment is really up, you'd think workers' comp claims would be up too, n'est-ce pas? But if claims were up, Liberty Mutual wouldn't have a workload problem. But if they do have a problem, why not cut hours instead of people, and avoid further cuts in their own potential workload? Is there a decine in workers' comp claims? If so, is it because we've lost so much rough-tough manufacturing and replaced it with wimpy service jobs? What about carpal tunnel? That should be a gold mine. And lower back problems from suppressed rage.]
   John Cusolito, a spokesman for Boston-based Liberty Mutual, confirmed yesterday that the company is laying off some of its 37,000 employees as part of a nationwide "expense management" program.... However, reports of 800 layoffs are not accurate, Cusolito said. "It's really too premature. We don't have an overall number."
   [Employers have gotten remarkably secretive about job kills lately - not like the old days of the 80s and early 90s when you could clinch a big stock boost by boasting a big bloodbath.]
   The layoffs come across the board, according to the former employees. But substantial numbers of workers were cut from the legal, computer support, research, and statistical analysis departments, they said.... About 75 workers in Liberty Mutual's information technology division in Dover and Portsmouth, NH, were let go at the beginning of July. Those layoffs were attributed to a declining need for technicians as the company completed its preparations for dealing with Y2K problems....
   [Let's see 800 out of 37,000 employees is only a 2.2% cut. Liberty Mutual could have avoided this whole negative PR by acting like a real company of companions and cutting its corporate workweek by that small amount instead of its workforce. A corporate workweek of 39 hours instead of 40. Radical. You can't tell us that they couldn't have easily adjusted to that, even with the evidently unimaginative top execs they seem to have. And if they need some inspiration, they can check out some precedents.]

2. In reorganization, Sterling [Commerce Inc.] to dismiss 200 workers, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...[A maker of] software for conducting business on the Internet said yesterday that it would dismiss about 200 employees, or 8% of its work force, as it reorganizes its product development, marketing, sales and services departments....
   [Hey, if the Internet is so redhot, how come these bozos can't maintain their present workforce? And if Sterling execs are such smart futuristic hotshots, how come they maintain an obsolete 1940's-era workweek and cut people, instead of maintaining people and cutting hours? Wouldn't an 8% cut in the workweek go good? - especially for families, especially for single parents. That would be a 36.8-hr workweek. YES!  Timesizing, Not Downsizing!]

1. Dow Chemical says it plans to buy Union Carbide [& plans to eliminate about 2,000 jobs, or 3.9%], by Claudia Deutsch, NYT, Front Page.
   ...leaving a global work force of about 49,000....
   [And what are the human (and consumer base) implications, you ask? Why, they're buried in the middle of the business section, of course...]
   In Danbury, employees fear cutbacks - The Mayor feels 'concern, not panic' and hopes for new development, by Mike Allen, NYT, C6.
   DANBURY, Conn., Aug. 4 - The quarter-mile-long headquarters of the Union Carbide Corporation, which soars out of the Connecticut woods with such angular, metallic starkness that locals call it [Foxwoods, oops sorry] the Battlestar Gallactica, had symbolized the resilience of a city that once was [we are not making this up] "The Hat Capital of the World" [Harry Truman, eat your heart out!], but lost manufacturers decade by decade. Today another trend, corporate consolidation, arrived when the Dow Chemical Company announced that it was buying Union Carbide...and would run the merged company from Dow's headquarters in Midland, Mich.
   Although the companies said they had not yet determined where they would cut, Union Carbide workers said they felt it was a virtual certainty that operations here would be cut back sharply or even shut down.... Today's developments dismayed David J. Burke, a finance director who has worked for Union Carbide for 18 years..\.. "You can only have so many chiefs," said Beth Donofrio...an administrative assistant, who said she might take this opportunity for a career change into foot massage....
   [Foot massage. Don't get us wrong. We love foot massages. But this is typical of the groundshift in America from good-pay&benefits secure full-time jobs to maybe-good-pay-but-NO-benefits insecure part-time jobs. Like a few years ago when Clinton was boasting about 10 million new jobs he'd created and a lady stood up and said, "I know, I know, I've got three of them myself."]
   The company moved its headquarters here in 1980. It has 850 employees in Danbury [with its 68,000 population] down from a peak of 3,300 in the mid-1980's....
   [Let's see, 2000 cuts in a total workforce of 51,000 is slightly over 3.9%. If Dow was smart like VW, Nucor and Lincoln Electric, it would make a 3.9% cut in its workweek, not its workforce, and maintain employment and the general consumer base, which is now going to be just a little less ready to buy the paints and other stuff that Dow makes. And that will mean just a few more jobcuts next year....]

2. Hutchinson Technology sets cutbacks, Bloomberg via NYT, C11.
   HUTCHINSON, Minn., Aug. 4 - ...The world's No. 1 maker of suspension systems for computer disk drives said today that it would relocate some operations at a Minnesota plant and cut 500 jobs there to reduce costs and improve productivity. Some assembly and an unknown number of jobs at the company's Hutchinson plant will be moved to plants in Eau Claire, Wis., and Sioux Falls, SD. The company employs more than 8,000, including 3,700 in Hutchinson, 2,400 in Eau Claire and 1,700 in Sioux Falls.
   [So they hope to hike productivity with jobcuts, which drag down productivity with employee anxiety, depression and reduced commitment - the "walking wounded."  Brilliant.  And as for saving money, they aren't even disclosing the hit they'll have to take to do this...]
   [The company] will take an unspecified charge in its fourth quarter, ending Sept. 26.
   [And check this out as a rationalization for chipping down your headquarters town (*Michael Moore, of the Flint, Mich. "rescue squad," take notice)...]
   A tight labor market in Hutchinson, where the company has its headquarters, has made it difficult to find enough workers to run some specialized equipment effectively, the company said....
   [Can they spell t-r-a-i-n-i-n-g?]
   "In Eau Claire and Sioux Falls, we have the resources in place to run more assembly units," Wayne Fortun, president and chief executive, said in a statement.
   [So do they have these "processes" completely automated at these other locations - no humans required? There's an important trade-off we've never thought of before - automation is replacing training - and further marginalizing the workforce than our rigid or rising workweeks are already succeeding in doing! It's like our whole who-cares approach to employees these days in the private sector implies a balancer in the public sector that just isn't there. The private sector thinks it can range free in looking for the best deal, regardless of human costs, and that slides from irrelevant moralizing to relevant economics when we realize the translation of human costs into depressed spending and markets. Our prevailing primitive level of economic theory centrifuges and socializes risk and loss, while concentrating and privatizing security and profit. But we're a social species, and you can't build predictable profits on unpredictable markets (= spending = earnings = jobs).
   [We need a public-sector balancer that will take the aggregate suicide out of all these individual smart moves. The jobs might be getting replaced numerically, but they're getting replaced with lower-wage jobs on more reluctantly demanded products or services, i.e., on less secure, less predictable jobs that yield less secure, less predictable markets.
   [Our first cut at designing a simple public-sector offset for all this is to automate massive grassroots reinvestment in markets, via training and jobs. The private sector is concentrating wealth? OK, we'll automate a simple way for the public sector to centrifuge it so the private sector can break out of its self-clobbering cycle of periodic depressions. We nominate the incidence of overtime as the best candidate for a natural market-determined targetter of reinvestment in training and hiring, and we make the amount of overtime adjustable by unfreezing the workweek and tying it to vary inversely with a new, more inclusive unemployment rate. We call it Timesizing.]

1. Jones Apparel to close factories and cut 1,910 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...after its $1.5 billion purchase of the shoe retailer Nine West Group Inc. [The Pa.-based] maker of women's clothing is closing factories in Kentucky and Indiana that employ 550, a factory in the Dominican Republic that employs 1,170 and Nine West's St. Louis administrative office, which employs 190. The cuts represent 21% of Nine West's 8,900 employees....
   [That's nearly 2,000 people who aren't going to be buying Jones clothing any more, plus their dependents & sympathizers, when they could have kept everyone employed by cutting 21% of the NineWest workweek instead of the workforce, and prorated pay - including for executives. The workweek&pay cut would be even less if Jones included its own workforce - and executives - just as Lincoln Electric does with its policy of "all sacrifice together, starting at the top."]

2. St. Paul to trim 1,000 jobs [7.4%] to reduce expenses, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...will make most of the cuts by the end of the year...in response to declining rates.
   [Note the gathering crisis of deflation. Declining rates, declining prices - typical depression conditions - when the centripetal force that concentrates money in an economy is unbalanced by centrifugal forces as the near-sighted wealthy transfer risks and costs to others and wind up desertifying their own base of support.
   [What should they be doing instead? Cutting the workweek instead of the workforce, of course. Timesizing, not staffsizing (and market sizing and future sizing - downwards).]

3. Fortune Brands fires 20% of golf employees, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, D8.
   ...Maker of Titleist golf balls said it fired 20% of its golf-equipment making employees as it combines to cut costs.... The sales forces will remain separate, though their operations will be reoroganized....
   [At least they're not dumb enough to cut their salesforce.]
   Three of six California locations will close; one will be changed from manufacturing to assembly and storage.
   [They'll need a lot of storage as our current braindead economics of downsizing cuts deeper and deeper into our consumer base.]
   The layoffs, totalling 150 people, have been completed and the building closings are expected to be completed by Jan. 1.... Conn.-based Fortune Brands rose 3/8 to 39-7/8. [All this suicidal nonsense was avoidable simply by cutting the firm's workweek instead of their workforce = Timesizing, not downsizing.

8/01-02/99  2 Weekend Downsizings Reported (total 680) -

1. 8/02 Sharp cuts at Daewoo car unit, Bloomberg via NYT, C8.
   SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 1 - The Daewoo Motor Co...the car-making arm of the debt-ridden Daewoo conglomerate [and So. Korea's 2nd-largest auto maker] said it would dismiss 30% of its executives and managers at 34 domestic and overseas operations and would reduce the number of parts suppliers to 300 by 2001 from about 500 now....

2. 8/01 Facing stiff competition, Sears plans job cuts, AP via New York Times, p. 13.
   HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., July 31 - Sears, Roebuck and Co. will trim about 680 jobs from its corporate headquarters by the end of October, the company said. The cuts will affect 10% of the company's headquarters staff and hundreds of independent contractors who will be let go by Aug. 31.... Sears has been under increasing pressure from lower-priced competitors, such as Wal-Mart...and Target....