• Hunton & Williams has announced that 23 associates and counsel and 64 staff members have been laid off. The cuts, announced in a firmwide e-mail distributed Thursday morning, are spread across practice areas and offices. They affect two percent of the Richmond-based firm’s 1000 lawyers and six percent of its staff. Today’s cuts are Hunton’s first round of layoffs since the start of the downturn.
• Faced with huge losses, rising debts, India’s second largest air carrier by market share, Jet Airways has axed its 120 foreign airhostesses from its 3000 cabin crew in a bid to save on costs.  This new round of axing cabin crew, comes close on the heels of Jet Airways terminating contracts of about 60 cabin crew, who were on probation, and another 50 employees who have superannuated, early this month as the airline moved to cut cost and stay trim. See Related Link: India’s domestic airlines to cut 2500 jobs.
• In yet another sign of the troubled economic times, a well-known intellectual property boutique Fish & Richardson is laying off 35 lawyers and 85 support staff.
• MeadWestvaco Corp. is closing its beverage packaging plant in Wilmington, putting 105 people out of work, the Virginia-based company announced.
• Polish media group Agora AGOD.WA is increasing staff cuts to 400 after falling circulation and dwindling advertising revenues.
• German auto parts manufaturer Schaeffler Group KG announced that it could axe up to 4500 jobs in Germany as part of restructuing efforts to save 250 million euros (US$340 million) as the global economic crisis cuts deeply into auto sales.
• Toledo-based Dana Holding Corp. has laid off 115 of the 280 employees working at its Fort Wayne axle plant, were in response to Chrysler LLP’s shutdown of plants that make Jeep Cherokees and Wranglers.
• ArcelorMittal officials have announced plans to layoff nearly 1000 workers at the steelmaker’s Indiana Harbor plant. The sagging economy, particularly the deep slump in auto manufacturing, has caused steep declines in demand for steel — less than a year after domestic steelmakers had recorded some of their highest revenues in history.
• After earlier layoff announcements concerning attorneys in its United States, Asia and Dubai offices, DLA Piper is now officially wielding the ax in the United Kingdom with  24 “fee-earners” and 100 support staff going.
• Freescale Semiconductor, Texas-based computer chipmaker, has decided to retrench around 250 professionals at its Bangalore centre, as the company seeks to lower its operational costs by shutting down several manufacturing units across the globe and trim its payroll.
• Seagate Technology said that it plans to cut about 1100 jobs from its workforce in a move the computer storage maker expects will reduce costs by about $125 million a year.

Total losses = 8131

Source: Layoff Tracker

The San Diego Union-Tribune announced it would be cutting 192 positions company-wide. The move comes three days after Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills private equity firm, completed its acquisition of the paper from its longtime owner, the Copley Press Inc.

Total losses = 192

• 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.

• Bloomers lays off 127 workers.  Bloomers makes components for diesel engines.
• Barneys New York is eliminating 76 positions. From sales people to corporate executives, the cuts are wide-ranging. The retailer said the cuts were effective Monday.
• In Houston, that city’s only daily, the Chronicle has announced it has begun laying off about 12 percent of its work force. At present there is no exact number on how many will go.
• Hunton & Williams is on the verge of big layoffs, says Above the Law. It seems the firm has been quietly laying off partners in the last two months, recently froze associate salaries, and offered an early retirement program of unknown scope to staff.
• General Motors Corp. starts laying off white-collar workers as part of its restructuring plan, with 160 people losing jobs at its technical center in Warren, Mich.
• Los Angeles Times photographer Lori Shepler, photo editor Tracy Silveria and video journalist John Vande Wege have been laid off. The paper is owned by the Tribune company, which is in bankruptcy. You can find the letters from some of the above people telling the world they have been laid off.
• New York Gov. David Paterson has ordered that more than 4 percent or 8900 of state government workers be laid off. The total workforce is over 200000.
• Dell’s Limerick closure to cause 9500 job losses.
• The rate at which architects are joining the dole has accelerated to a year-on-year increase of 760%, it has emerged.
• The Newseum, the news museum in Washington DC was forced to make 13 job cuts last week as a result of funding cuts.
• Transport For London said 1000 posts will go at London Underground, including some lost after maintenance work was brought back in-house following the collapse of Metronet, and another several hundred at Transport for London.
• Removals company Pickfords could go through a pre-pack administration putting more than 1000 jobs at risk, despite only being rescued 12 months ago.
• A Newcastle law firm Watson Burton says it is looking at cutting about 75 staff.
• Kaleidoscope Travel Group has been forced to lay off 60 staff at Travelsphere and Page & Moy after weakening demand for escorted tours.

Total losses = 20898

Here is ITV’s Executive Chairman Michael Grade talking about the recession and the job losses that are to follow at ITV.

Listen to how many times he um’s or uh’s when he has to mention the bad news.

We will manage our way through this recession with minimal affect on our viewers uh’ um’, it’s prudent housekeeping… It’s just horrible, not what any of us come to work to do uh’, the fact is uh’, it’s made necessary by forces absolutely outside of our control.. uh’ and it’s absolutely horrible uh’ that the global recession means that we are going to have to lose valuable colleages. It’s just horrible.

Hardly sincere Mr Executive Chairman.

It comes after ITV reported pre-tax losses of £2.73 billion after it wrote down the value of assets on its balance sheet. This is 41% down on their 2007 forecast.

Pre-Tax Losses = badly run business Mr Executive Chairman, and now 600 people are paying the price for these losses.

Job losses = 600

Related Links:

• Youtube.com
• ITN.co.uk