Steel of West Virginia Lays Off 13 Workers Wausau Homes in Wisconsin Will Lay Off 81 Employees Planned Parenthood gives people the pink slip Windstream Connections cuts 170 jobs in Kentucky Steelcase plant closing in Georgia, 300 jobs will be lost 350 lose their jobs at aviation company Pratt & Whitney
December 4, 2008
I Got a Letter Like This Before They Canned Me Too
In another, not so shocking round of layoffs at Viacom, 850 employees were given notice to pack up their things and exit their respective buildings today amidst a sea of security guards. The higher ups wrote numerous lengthy and obviously depressing letters (read the linked article above for the juicy details) to their employees talking [...]
December 4, 2008
Finance Industry Takes More Hits
Credit Suisse Lays Off 5,300 Associated Press reports, the bank’s “shares rose 5.3 percent… following the announcement.” Credit Suisse says it won’t need a government bailout, and “has raised capital from foreign investors, including the government-controlled Qatar investment Authority, to bolster its reserves.” Boston Financial Firm State Street Cuts Workforce by 6% Middle and Senior [...]
December 4, 2008
The News Isn’t Doing Its Job
What’s the collateral damage of downsized news corporations? News that doesn’t “sell” gets slashed. That means unsexy investigative journalism gets sidelined (Sam Zell recently poo poo’d investigative journalism by saying “I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize.”) And news organizations compete over who can pay Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt the most [...]
December 4, 2008
Workplace Psychological Counseling, a Booming Business?
We’ve all seen the headlines and statistics. The U.S. is officially in a recession, every major corporation—from Starbucks, to Yahoo, to NBC, Viacom, and the list goes on—is downsizing. But how are the people who have been spared the ax coping? Corporate Counseling Associates, a workplace counseling firm that offers Employee Assistance Programs, came out [...]
December 4, 2008
A Government Bailout for the Poor and Hungry?
People’s Weekly World reports that 2 million Americans signed on to the food stamp program this year. A sign that there are “more people in need, more people being laid off, and food costs going up.” Specialists call for an increase in food stamps and government nutrition programs to combat what many call a “crisis.”
December 4, 2008
Un-Happy Holidays at AT&T
According to the Associated Press, AT&T announced today that the company plans to lay off 12,000 employees, about 4% of their workforce. This announcement comes on top of the 4,600 jobs that were cut in April. The nation’s largest telecommunications company plans to distribute the pink slips throughout December and 2009. Apparently the notion of [...]
December 4, 2008
Grease Is Not The Word
Another Broadway show bites the dust! Spawned from the classic John Travolta/Olivia Newton John film, by way of a NBC reality series “Grease: You’re The One That I Want,” the Great White Way version of “Grease” will be closing on January 4, 2009. Due to these “challenging” economic times, the producers decided to shift their [...]
December 4, 2008
Publishing Houses Not So Stable
It very well may be the end of literature as we know it. A barrage of layoffs at major publishing houses have come to light today. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has another major layoff—this time, it is Executive Editor Ann Patty. Simon & Schuster laid off 35 people. Random House is “restructuring” and streamlining, and layoffs seem imminent. [...]
December 4, 2008
Tina Brown Pays Her Online Writers
Magazines and newspapers are brutally slashing their budgets and their workforce, going bankrupt and even closing up shop. Where is a writer to go to get a byline and a paycheck? The New York Observer says you should go to Tina Brown’s new website, the Daily Beast. They apparently pay about 50 cents a word, [...]
