Environment
Fifty thousand job losses in two weeks.
It has been a grim two weeks around the world with plenty of big name companies letting go employees. Below are just a summary of the ones that caught the news.
Russia’s AvtoVAZ plan to layoff 27000 employees to improve performance at a factory that has been clobbered by the sharp drop in demand for cars.
OCI Chemical Corp layoffs 38 employees
Ashland Inc plans to cut 1800 jobs
True Textile layoffs 84 workers

Verizon Communications cuts 8000 jobs

GE Consumer & Industrial to close Kentucky plant 125 jobs lost

ATK Space Systems to cut 450 jobs in October

Contec Holdings layoffs 132 workers

Hartford Financial Services cuts 270 jobs
Portola Tech International layoffs 130 employees
IMS Health plans to cut 850 jobs
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Air Products and Chemicals to cut 1150 jobs

Minerals Technologies plans to cut 200 jobs

Stanley Works cuts 200 jobs worldwide
Flash Networks layoffs 40 cuts salary for others
Bell Helicopter layoffs 150 workers in Canada
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Branson Ultrasonics to close Honeoye Falls plant 46 jobs lost
GE Oil and Gas layoffs 93 employees
Law firm Dechert cuts 25 jobs
American Coal Company layoffs 37 workers

Siemens plans to cut 1400 jobs in Europe
Avon to cut 1200 jobs
Pratt & Whitney to cut 1000 jobs in Connecticut

Yahoo to cut 675 jobs
Alliance Resource Partners layoffs 72 employees
Assurant Employee Benefits plans to cut 91 jobs
Hardinge layoffs 50 workers
Intel plans to layoff 294 employees in Ireland
US Airways plans to cut 34 jobs at General Mitchell International Airport
Belden to close Mass. plant lay off 170
Erica Lyons to lay off 75 close Miami facility
Continental Airlines cuts 1700 jobs
Gemini Manufacturing Corp to layoff 81 workers
Carlisle Tire & Wheel to close North College Street plant 340 jobs at stake
Cygnus Business Media cuts 50 jobs
Buckeye Partners layoffs 260 employees
Microdyne to close Groveport center layoffs 78
Arizona Attorney General’s Office cuts 29 jobs

Kimberly-Clark cuts 750 jobs
D.C.’s Department of Mental Health layoffs 120 employees
Harley-Davidson Financial Services cuts 100 jobs
Source: Layoff Tracker
Total losses = 50392
Crunch victims for first week of June 2009.
Here is a sample of job losses, layoffs, and people being fired for various reasons during the first week of June 2009. Not a good sight to see.
Machester Tank closes plant, 66 jobs lost
Fort Wayne Foundry Corp cuts 461 jobs
Harsco Corp cuts 90 jobs

Nearly 100 Turner Industries contract maintenance workers were laid off from the Georgia Gulf plant in Plaquemine
Lockheed Martin layoffs 100 employees
10000 jobs under threat at Royal Dutch Shell
Multiserv layoffs 90 employees
Volvo USA cuts 135 jobs

Southco Inc. laid off 200 employees throughout its global network Wednesday, including 69 at its Delaware County headquarters. The general economic conditions were the cause of these reductions.
Penske Logistis layoffs 53 truck drivers
Nestor Traffic Systems goes into receivership, more than 100 jobs at stake
ABB cuts 25 jobs at Jefferson City plant
Trane Inc will layoff 320 at Pueblo plant by August
Barlow Lyde & Gilbert layoffs 49 in England
McDermott layoffs 25 lawyers and 47 staff
Satyam may layoff only 5000
Philips Products closes Stayton plant, 125 jobs lost
Call centre operator MCCI layoffs 450
University of Colorado cuts 75 jobs
Paragon Industries cuts 105 jobs
Tree of Life layoffs 39 jobs
Hardigg Industries cuts 50 jobs
AGCo cuts 60 jobs
Rheem Manufacturing cuts 470 employees

Aegon USA a subsidiary of Netherlands-based insurer Aegon N.V., will cut 138 positions from its Louisville offices at Aegon Tower.
Emerson lays off 176 in Minnesota
Capital Group cuts 820 jobs
Principal Financial Group cuts 220 jobs
Ken-American Resources layoffs 75 employees
Fidelity Investments layoffs 45 in Merrimack
Dorsey & Whitney cuts 55 jobs
Harris Corp layoffs 100 mechanical engineers

Waukesha Engine cuts 113 jobs. The layoffs, plus the 84 layoffs and 17 early retirements in February, account for 40 percent of the plant’s union members. The company blames the Economic Downturn has affected their product so they are trying to align their work force.
Wausau Paper closes Appleton facility, 100 jobs lost
John Deere layoffs 494 workers at Iowa plant
Nanogen layoffs 89 employees
Suzuki & Mitsubishi car delarships to close in Hernando County, 80 jobs lost
Autodesk Inc to cut 430 jobs in latest round of layoffs
Metlife layoffs around 250
Greenwich Hospital layoffs 77 employees
BP Solar laying off 140 in US and 480 staff in Spain.

BP Solar is laying off 140 assembly line workers in Frederick and slashing 480 jobs from its 575 employee facility in Spain. Soft demand is to blame for the job losses.
Job losses = 620
May day Monday!
It might be a May day holiday in the UK today, but it seems the job loss announcements have not abated.
- London-based advertising company WPP Group Plc will cut a total of 7200 jobs this year, hurt by cuts in client companies’ advertising spending amid the recession. Of the total planned job reductions, about half has already been lost, with the rest expected to go by the end of 2009.
- Software group Sage will announce 1000 job cuts.
- Plumbing giant Wolseley is axing more than 250 jobs at two sites in Lancashire and Oxfordshire. The bulk of the losses will be made at its distribution centre in Chorley with 133 jobs going when the lease on the building expires this August and it is also closing a distribution centre in Didcot with the loss of 76 jobs.
- XFM and Gold radio stations will be losing at least 20 jobs. Redundancies are expected online, in marketing and design departments too.
- Global defence giant BAE Systems announced the loss of 500 jobs and the closure of three sites, partly because of the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. 50 jobs will go at its Newcastle plant on Scotswood Road, while sites at Telford in Shropshire, Leeds and Guildford in Surrey will close by June next year, with some compulsory redundancies expected.
- Five Pizza Hut restaurants are to close with the loss of around 130 jobs after the company which holds the Northern Ireland franchise went into administration.
- Vestas Wind Systems will slash it’s workforce by 1900. The company that makes wind turbines will make the redundancies mostly in Denmark and the UK, include 450 at it’s factory on the Isle Of Wight.
The Klaus Kneale Pink-Slip List (P-SL) for April 2009.
The following Pink-Slip List (P-SL) was compiled by Klaus Kneale.
Job Losses = 19247
April 28: On top of 1850 layoffs announced in January, Clear Channel slashes 590 jobs, bringing cuts to 12% of its original workforce total.
April 27: Lockheed Martin dismisses 225 in New York; cites lost business for Presidential Helicopter Program.
April 27: PPG Industries lays off 110 at fiberglass plant in North Carolina.
April 27: CSX fires more than 150 at New York rail yard.
April 27: General Motors increases originally planned cuts to its U.S. hourly workforce by 8000.
April 24: Carrier Corporation a subsidiary of United Technologies cuts 140 hourly workers.
April 23: Embarq closes call center in North Carolina and dismisses 51 workers.
April 22: Philip Morris International closes North Carolina cigarette plant and fires 1100 workers.
April 22: T. Rowe Price Group reduces workforce by 5.5% (288 jobs), hitting all areas of the company except portfolio managers.
April 22: Capital One Financial cuts 60 employees in its credit card division.
April 20: Brown-Forman Corp. pink-slips 250 workers, or 6% of its global workforce.
April 21: Yahoo! reports 78% drop in first-quarter profit and 5% cut in global workforce (roughly 675 employees).
April 20: Nordstrom cuts 72 jobs in Iowa and Washington.
April 18: Weyerhaeuser closes trucking division in Oregon and cuts 75 jobs.
April 15: Emerson Electric subsidiary in Tennessee fires 200 workers at plant that makes industrial generators.
April 14: Discover Financial Services blames credit losses for 4% workforce reduction (500 jobs).
April 14: Deere & Co. combines two units resulting in 200 pink-slips.
April 13: General Electric fires 100 workers at plant in North Carolina on reduced demand for the plant’s products.
April 9: General Electric’s health care arm fires 179 in Wisconsin.
April 9: Johnson & Johnson cuts 900 jobs in its U.S. pharmaceuticals division as competition in drugs pushes prices down.
April 8: Eastman Chemical notifies 300 employees of layoff; 200 of the cuts are in Tennessee, where the company is based.
April 8: Navistar International pink-slips 350 workers at plant in Ontario.
April 8: Deere & Co. fires 160 workers in Iowa factory in latest of ongoing cuts.
April 6: Weakness in solar power forces General Electric to layoff 85 at solar-panel plant in Delaware.
April 6: Procter & Gamble dismisses 90 workers at Puerto Rico plant that makes skin care products and cold medicine.
April 3: FedEx fires 1000 following a 75% drop in third-quarter earnings announced last month.
April 3: Walt Disney Co. cuts 1900 jobs 1200 people and 700 empty positions at its U.S. theme parks.
April 2: Rite Aid closes a distribution center in Georgia and lays off 297 workers.
April 1: 3M slashes global workforce by 1.5% (1200 jobs) following a December cut of 2300 workers.
More Monday blues for hundreds of credit crunch victims.

- Park Nicollet Health Services annouced today they were laying off 233 workers and would not be filling another 69 open positions. The reductions which take effect from Friday, represent 1.8 percent of St. Louis Park-based Park Nicollet’s work force. A decline in services has seen investment suffer, although most believe the recession is to blame.
- Georgia-Pacific say they will lay off 39 hourly employees by mid-May.
- General Motors Corp. started firing 1600 white-collar workers Monday in order to qualify for more government loans (doesn’t make sense now does it?). GM has said it will eliminate 47000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2009, but the cuts may go even deeper as the company moves toward its deadline.
- Renewable Environmental Solutions, last month filed for Chapter 11 in bankruptcy court in New York and today laid off about 50 employees at the plant. Read the story.#
- Legg Mason laid off 40 admin and support workers, including 5 at its Baltimore HQ.
- Herbert Smith is to cut up to 84 members of staff from it London office and is also reversing all associate pay bands.
- The DSM chemical plant is cutting 80 people to cut costs, effective at the end of June.
- The Quincy school district announced its second and final round of cuts. 15 employees were honorably dismissed who worked as educational support personal. That includes library staff, computer staff and paraprofessional personal.
- Tele Atlas, a New Hampshire-based company that makes digital maps is laying off 120 employees at its Lebanon headquarters and 140 jobs in North America.
- It has been reported in The Herald Journal that 27 lecturers and research lab workers who have lost their jobs at USU in the latest round of cuts.
- Sun-Times Media Group Inc. has cut about 140 jobs companywide as it tries to trim costs during its bankruptcy reorganization. The cuts, which affected both managers and non-managers, amounted to about 10% of the company’s non-union staff.
- Robert Bosch Corp. announced Monday that 225 workers from its North Charleston plant would be laid off.
Total losses = 2798
86 job losses at Environment Ministry (NZ).
Over 300 staff from Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington were told by management about the planned changes.
They have been told 86 positions will go.
Chief executive Paul Reynolds has told staff he is committed to retaining as many people as possible.
The changes include axing the Bioethics Council, experts responsible for providing cultural and spiritual advice on issues like genetic modification.
It is also stopping its Carbon Neutral programme for the public sector and is scaling back recycling services.
So it looks like saving the environment is not as important after all.
Total losses = 86




