-Caveat Lector- http://www.doomdujour.com/1downsiz.htm This is just a portion of the article. The entire article is in the download. Downsizings - the beat(ing) goes on... (and we don't mean case-by-case firings for just cause) Wake up, America! While a ‘conspiracy of optimism’ lulls you with cheer leading, ongoing downsizings stymie wages and consumer spending & act to compact wealth. Check out instances that made it to the New York Times... For those already hip to the dumbness of downsizing, check *7 alternatives, and for more on the simplest and most popular (#2), click here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11/24/99 3 downsizings reported, totaling 3350 jobs + unspecified - 1.[Another installment of those 95,000 layoffs a year between 1995 and 2000, predicted 4 years ago for the banking industry alone.] KeyCorp plans to lay off 3,000 employees, by David Johnston, NYT, C3. ...The Cleveland financial company that in five years has grown from a regional bank into a broader financial services concern with...operations from Maine to Alaska, said yesterday that it would lay off...11%...in its work force..\..to cut costs. [There's a fatal contradiction that passes for management strategy today - markets are good, and theoretically markets require a well employed population to come up with the money to spend, but let somebody else do the employing.] The company would not specify how the...reduction...would be carried out over the next 13 months except to say that it would flatten its management structure.... [The good news? For once -] Analysts were skeptical. [They] criticized..\..Robert W. Gillespie, the chief executive...for lurching from one strategic initiative to another without generating expected growth in revenue.... [Yeah well, revenue growth requires markets, and not to put too fine a point on it, "markets require a well employed population to come up with the money to spend." We're getting more and more desperate employers scrambling for fewer and fewer solid markets. And guess who's been undermining them. If employers don't want to maximize employment, they're not going to maximize markets and revenue growth either, especially by cutting employment further. There's no free lunch, and you can only "work the float" for just so long between your cuts and everybody else's cuts before the whole thing collapses.] 2.Hillenbrand [Industries] reducing staff in its health care unit, Dow Jones via NYT, C4. The holding company...said yesterday that its Hill-Rom Company health care unit would cut about 350 positions, or 5%, over nine months. The reduction will primarily eliminate administrative positions.... The unit employs approximately 6,600 people worldwide, with about 2,000 in the Batesville, Ind., area, where it is based.... Hillenbrand's shares fell $3.8125 each, to $32. [Some companies seem to want a symmetry between the often long lead-time required for upsizings (one 7500-job upsizing last summer was going to stretch across 10 years!) and the often short or no lead-time practiced in downsizings. Here Hillenbrand is going to stretch 350 job cuts over 9 months. We'd argue that this is counter-productive, however, because it just drags out the anxiety and the mourning. The "walking wounded" are not particularly productive employees, and some of them may turn into saboteurs, or even "go postal." Far better to cut the dramatics and just trim the workweek a little for everyone, rather than completely for a few, whether quickly or slowly. Because that "few" is often followed by a few more next year, and a few more the following year, and.... You get the idea. Once the world switches over to timesizing, not downsizing, we're going to look back in disbelief at the barbarity of our current ways.] 3.Cole to close optical departments in Ward Stores, Bloomberg via NYT, C4. ...A retailer of eyeglasses and lenses said yesterday that it would close its 150 optical departments in Montgomery Ward stores to focus on businesses like Pearle Vision and Sears Optical stores.... 11/23 3 downsizings reported, totaling 100 jobs + unspecified - 1.International Business Machines Corp., NYT, C4. ...Armonk, NY...said it had cut more than 100 workers in its software unit, or about 0.5% of the employees in the division, in its 3rd round of reductions in six weeks. [Don't recall that they shared with us the previous 2 rounds....] 2.Pinn National Gaming Inc., NYT, C4. ...Wyomissing, Pa., plans to purchase all the assets of two Mississippi casinos from Hollywood Park Inc., a gaming and entertainment holding company based in Inglewood, Calif.... ["All the assets" - and none of the employees. We're starting to get wise to the various code phrases for layoffs. Here's another example -] 3.Tufts Health to quit N.H., R.I., Maine - Cites $45m in losses in leaving 3 states, by Matthew Brelis, Boston Globe, D1. [The only good news here - ] ...Dr. Harris Berman, the chief executive of Tufts Health Plan...said "the good news is 87% of our business is in Massachusetts, and we expect to make a modest surplus here." [Ah, with what care he avoids the nasty word "profit."] DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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