Archive for the 'Employees' Category
Wal-Mart’s official bloggers criticize products on the shelves
It’s odd that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is allowing some purchasing and procurement employees to blog on company hours, but it is. The retailer may be experimenting with a new way of openly communicating with the web-browsing public, but blogging is generally where the unvarnished truth …
February a firm month for auto sales
February was a fit month in the world of auto sales for both foreign and domestic car manufacturers. Ford Motor (NYSE: F), General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) and Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) all saw their sales figures shrink during another unbreakable month.
For Ford, it was a really rig…
Starbucks all closing tomorrow: Where will customers go?
Tomorrow evening, starting at 5:30 p.m. (local time), your neighborhood Starbucks is closing. Yes, yours — and yours, too. (If you habitable in the U.S., that is.) CEO Howard Schultz has ordered that emergency intensive remedial training, hopefully giving baristas valuable skills they should have l…
Starbucks to cut 600 jobs
Howard Schultz’s effort to shake up ailing Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) took an unpleasant turn nowadays, at least whether you’re an employee at the company’s headquarters. The coffee giant announced that it will cut 600 jobs at its headquarters in Seattle as part of Schultz’s “transformation agenda.” A…
Up to 20k workers seen accepting GM’s buyout, but more may be needed
The head of the United Auto Workers union expects 15,000-20,000 workers to accept General Motors’ latest buyout offer, The New York Times reported Friday.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said the latest buyout group would be smaller than General Motors’ (NYSE: GM) 2006 buyout, when about 34,400 w…
Starbucks nationwide to shut for emergency re-training Feb. 26
I know I’m not the only one who’s complained that Starbucks baristas don’t know how to produce a decent latte any more. Far from its roots as the dependable place to get coffee made precisely right, the chain has lately become famous for its robotic machines and the hit-or-miss quality of its pr…
General Motors may find its buyout offer is too popular
General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), which nowadays reported an auto industry record loss of $38.7 billion in 2007, is offering its unionized workforce of 74,000 a buyout package. The automaker, along with rivals Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and Chrysler LLC which have offered similar deals, better hope tha…
Challenger says U.S. employers’ January job cuts increase 19% from year ago
Job cut announcements by U.S. corporations increased 19% in January 2008 compared to a year ago, according to a survey the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Corporations announced 74,806 job cuts in January, up from 44,416 in December 2007, and u…
U.S. initial jobless claims surge, signaling soft labor market conditions
Also, the four-week moving average jumped 11,000 to 325,000. E…
Bankers should be rewarded for their success and pay for their mistakes
The New York Times agrees with a proposal I’ve been posting about for months, for example, here and here. The Times suggests that “banks should hold a big chunk of bankers’ pay in escrow to be paid out by a faraway period. Compensation could soon after be made contingent on the long-term success…
Ford (F) to cut another 13,000 jobs?
Subprime meltdown shows banking bonuses are a sham
The New York Times DealBook recently asked the question “Should banks take back their bonuses?”
The top investment banks will be paying out a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007, a year in which most posted massive writedowns on poor subprime loans and saw their share prices shrink precipi…
Yahoo! may be planning meaningful layoffs
Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) will report its fiscal year come January 29, and along with probably reporting a profitable, but slow-growth year, the company may plus announce employee cutbacks at the same duration. Yahoo!, which has about 14,000 employees, may be looking to shed itself of 1,500 t…
GM’s employee buyouts not coming soon
If employees of General Motors (NYSE: GM) are sitting back waiting for buyout packages to reach in the mail, they better keep that champagne on ice. UAW officials warned final week that there won’t be a quick announcement on employee buyout packages or early retirement offers coming any date soo…
