General Motors: GM announced Monday that it will lay off 1,300 workers at a Detroit plant. The workers make the Chevy Volt, in addition to the Chevy Impala and Buick LaCrosse.
Those job cuts are in addition to 2,000 other GM (GM) employees who will lose their jobs within a month.
Boeing: Layoffs are nothing new for Boeing in 2016 — the company has already fired thousands as demand for jumbo jets slumps. But Boeing (BA) told employees Monday it will continue to cut jobs at its commercial airplane unit in 2017, citing fierce competition with rival Airbus and a drop in new orders.
Airbus also told its labor unions in November that it was cutting around 1,200 jobs.
GoPro: The action camera company announced plans last month to lay off 200 workers. That comes after it laid off more than 100 employees in January.
Many of the latest job cuts come as GoPro (GPRO, Tech30) plans to shut down its entertainment unit. That group was responsible for featuring videos shot on GoPro’s action cameras.
Xerox: The company is splitting in two before the end of the year, and company President Jeff Jacobson says layoffs are coming — even though the point of the split was to stem the company’s sales slide.
He declined to say how many will be let go, but the 39,000 employees at Xerox’s (XRX) legacy copier business are most likely to be impacted.
Caterpillar: After laying off 10,000 employees last fall, Caterpillar (CAT) said last week that it will issue another round of pink slips.
The construction giant didn’t say how many jobs will be cut, but it said it will try to place as many as possible in new jobs at the company. A post-recession rebound has proved difficult for Caterpillar. Its forecast for the coming year is pretty dour.
The Limited: The clothing store told all 248 employees at its Ohio home office that their jobs are in jeopardy. Earlier this month, the company said on an earnings call that it is looking for cash to keep the company alive, and it might have to shutter stores.
Ho Ho Fucking Ho. And people think Trump is going to magically fix this? The man who handed Carrier millions upon millions so they can automate people out of their jobs? Dream on, as you fall into poverty.
More bad news here: Trump ignores Indiana factory relocating to Mexico.
Via CNN.
Not that I want to make you vomit out your nose, but if you look closely at that list, a lot of those are companies that used foreign payment schemes to avoid paying any taxes at all. So, while Caterpillar is laying people off, they’ve already made sure they are more profitable than they have any reason being; they’re just going to be a little more unreasonably profitable.
Ditto: Boeing*, Xerox**
GoPro appears to not be cheating on its taxes, but maybe it’s just because all their stuff is built using virtually slave labor. Ditto The Limited.
(* Boeing: 0% taxes)
(**Xerox paid 7.2% taxes, wouldn’t you love to pay such a low rate?)
Marcus, yeah, I know. The problem lies in convincing people. Every day that Rick works, he’s surrounded by Trumpoids bellowing about how Trump is gonna bring the jobs, man! Unlike them, we aren’t idiots, but trying to get through to Trumpoids is an unbelievably difficult task.
If any of those hit home, it will be Caterpillar, because they are huge in the midwest. The fact that they will be pulling this shit yet again, that’s going to be a bad blow to all those Trumpoids.
Also, I’m sure, after they are done gutting healthcare, the repub eyes will turn to unnecessary things like unemployment bennies.
Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure they’ll find a way to blame it on gay people marrying, trans people going for a pee, women not having 12 babies each and black people breathing at all.
/off-topic
@Giliell
Glad you’re safe, btw.
/on-topic
Yes, the pig people drinking from the Republican trough are convinced it is the fault of everyone but the corporatists who haven’t yet sent them down the river that said corporatists keep outsourcing their jobs to maintain profit.
All I want for xmas if for folks to improve their relationship with cause and effect.
Siobhan
Thanks, but don’t worry about me when you hear “Berlin”. There are 4 European capitals I live closer to than my own. I’m just angry they simply arrested what was apparently the first muslim they could find and gave the real terrorist a 12 hours headstart.
In a (very loose) sense this is what happened to me: Last year about this time (late Dec) I was informed my position was under threat (there has always been a dispute just what that warning was or the expected actions). The reason given I’ve always considered bullshite, with the real reason being cost-cutting by “unloading” expensive people (read: firing experts in areas not understood by executive crooks).
Under French law it’s hard to fire someone (excepting, maybe, for criminal activity?), and the law provides extensive employee protections. End result is I had to engage a lawyer who ultimately, I admit, negotiated a very good deal, which didn’t take effect until a point during the last half of this year; that means I continued to be employed for around nine mouths. And took home an after-tax settlement which is a multiple of my before-tax annual salary, plus certain other benefits.
Anyways, some of the above comments made me wonder what Big DummyCo paid in taxes. I didn’t dig too hard, but apparently it was c.20% last year, an increase from something around 13% the year before. I do not know if that is worldwide or USA-only. (Profit margins have been all over the map, which is one reason I suspect the real reason behind my position being eliminated was cost-cutting.)
Since Big DummyCo has operations, including expensive factories, around the world, I presume they are also playing dubious tax games. Indeed, some years ago, they got slapped for some highly dubious executive compensation scheme(s?).
(One of the biggest concerns, individually, is two of the countries I have involvement with, USAliens and UKlods, have gone fascist, with a real risk a third, France, my current home, will do so in around five months time.)
Seems like firing people before christmass is another great american tradition, my previous employer did that too. I wish I had other option than being employed by an american company, it is like sitting on a keg of gun powder…
Charly:
Yes, it is. Any company whose fiscal year ends on 12/31 will fire people prior to the holidays, so they can expense severance packages.
CEO’s christmas present to the shareholders, maybe?* And I think everybody knows what kind of going-away presents CEOs get…
*”Aww, you put 2000 people out on the streets on New Year’s Eve? You shouldn’t have!”**
**You really, really shouldn’t have!
@komarov #10
A golden parachute? CEO and similar high-ranking managerial positions are the only jobs known to me where failure is rewarded as well as success. All the talk about how managers deserve their overinflated paychecks because they are “carrying a lot of responsibility” is in 99% just talk. When they fail, they usually pack their moneybags and go to fail somewhere else.
I’m sure the conservative bootlickers will just shrug: “shoulda had a golden parachute” like the execs do.
You underestimate the brilliance of Trump -- all he has to do is say the layoffs never happened and therefore they will not have happened.
All those unpatriotic liars claiming to have lost their jobs will be shot as traitors along with their families and posthumustly be declared Muslim terrorists.
Charly@#11:
Yep. I know one high tech exec who has wrecked 4 companies (so far) and gotten a huge payout to leave from each one of them. His main skill (other than spending money) appeared to be golfing with venture capitalists and pre-allocating the blame for failure on other people.
I always go into spiralling spasms of cynicism when I hear about some security breach at a company, and some executive gets replaced. It’s probably the best thing that happens to them -- they get to cash out their options and hit the road. Meanwhile the poor bastards in the trenches have to deal with the damage. Yahoo! breach being a good example. CEO Mayer has been suspiciously absent, which probably means they are negotiating the size and weight of her golden parachute, while the shareholders have just lost about $1b in valuation on the deal and the security team (who were red-flagging the stuff all along) get hung out to dry.
What capitalists don’t seem to understand is that capitalism doesn’t produce trustworthy people. Actually, it produces predictably dishonest people. And then the capitalists are all shocked when executives act like sharks in business suits -- and they never look in a nearby reflective surface.
Well, I wasn’t going to state the obvious, Charly, but you seem to have no qualms at all. I’m sure there are at least some CEOs out there who are midly ashamed about how they got so filthily rich and don’t want to reminded at every turn. Please, show some decorum towards those poor, poor people.*
*Their only real flaw is is that they are terrible at their job and terrible at staying out of the workforce. Most people only ever manage one of those throughout their lifetimes.
Marcus
Well, a few years ago the CEO of Mr company changed. Since then some things have gone wrong. Now, for the sake of translating and anonymity, just imagine the man’s name was Mr Fuck. Now, while nobody would ever say out aloud that the CEO is a damn failure, a standard phrase has become “I cannot tell you names, but somebody fucked this up”.
Giliell, I think you will find this manufacturer of gardening equipment to be interestingly named -click-. I hope you do not mind my knowing where your husband works.
I think I already wrote that, but in last few years I got tho a phase where “you manager” is to my mind the worst insult possible.
Charly
World’s biggest chemical compound. I think you know where that is. I remember us talking about a town close to it recently. And yeah, billygoat it is…