Saturday, April 18, 2009

Toledo plans to layoff 300, including 75 officers


TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- Toledo is planning to layoff about 300 city workers to deal with a $20 million budget deficit.

Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner announced the cuts Friday. They include 75 police officers on top of the 75 officers the city already planned to let go.

Finkbeiner says some of the job losses could be avoided if union leaders agree to contract changes, such as pay cuts, or if city council took action to increase revenue.

The city also plans to force nonunion employees to take a 20 percent pay cut by going to a 32-hour work week.

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Boeing issues 300 layoff notices


read article under copyright at link above

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Qantas slashes profit estimate, plans mass job cuts


By Myra P. Saefong, MarketWatch

TOKYO (MarketWatch) -- Qantas Airways said Tuesday it is cutting its fiscal 2009 earnings expectation by as much as 80% and plans to lower its flying capacity, reduce spending and eliminate up to 1,750 jobs in response to a major slump across the air travel industry.

"Market conditions have deteriorated, especially in our international business," said Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce. "We are experiencing significantly lower demand, particularly in premium classes, and considerable price pressures with extensive sales and discounting by all carriers."

The Australian flag carrier said it now expects its profit before taxes to fall to a range of A$100 million to A$200 million ($72 million to $145 million), compared to its previous forecast of A$500 million.

In the year ending June 2008, Qantas earned A$1.41 billion.

The new outlook "is subject to no further changes in market conditions, fuel prices, and volatility in hedge accounting results," Qantas said in a statement.
But Joyce added that, looking ahead, "Qantas expects the current volatility in operating conditions to continue for some time," and that "these volatile market conditions make it difficult to provide forecasts."

The company also said the capacity reductions and related restructuring will likely impact up to 1,250 full-time jobs, and it plans to remove an additional 500 management positions.

Qantas said it will minimize redundancies for the 1,750 positions by utilizing workforce initiatives, but "some redundancies will be unavoidable and will lead to additional restructuring costs in 2008/2009."

It said it also will reduce its flying capacity by around 5% and ground up to 10 aircraft.

Shares of Qantas (AU:QAN: news , chart , profile ) touched a low of A$1.74 before closing 2% higher at A$2, tracking the broader gains in Sydney, where Australia's S&P/ASX 200 finished with a gain of 2.2%.

Following the airlines' announcement Tuesday, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its corporate credit ratings on Qantas to BBB/A-3 from BBB+/A-2 and said its rating outlook on the company remains negative.

Moody's said its downgrade to Baa2 from Baa1 in February anticipated the reduced earnings outlook.

Myra P. Saefong is MarketWatch's assistant global markets editor, based in Tokyo.

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Navistar to lay off final 345 employees in Chatham


The Canadian Press

CHATHAM, Ont. — Layoff notices have been issued to the remaining 345 employees at the Navistar truck plant in Chatham, Ontario.

The layoffs are due to take effect June 27th -- three days before the workers' current contract expires.

The company is required by law to issue the notices.

Bargaining on a new contract is expected to start early next month.

Already this year, Navistar has had two rounds of layoffs covering almost 700 workers at the plant.

The heavy truck industry is being hit hard by the U-S recession and the slumping Canadian economy.

Last year, rival Stirling Truck announced the closing of its plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, resulting in the loss of about 2,000 jobs.

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CMS announces 107 more layoffs


The cuts, including math and science coordinators and ESL assistants, save $4.3 million, bring total job loss to 213.
By Eric Frazier


CMS Superintendent, Dr. Peter Gorman speaks to the 24-member Athletic Eligibility Advisory Committee Thursday afternoon. TODD SUMLIN - tsumlin@charlotteobserver.com
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Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has added 107 more employees to its layoff list, this time including math and science coordinators and English as a Second Language assistants.

The cuts, announced Friday afternoon by Superintendent Peter Gorman, will save the district $4.3 million.

“The economic downturn is forcing the district to make some very hard decisions about trimming our expenses,” Gorman said in a statement. “And because so much of our budget is tied up in people, these cuts are necessary.”

Officials have said they need to cut as many as 534 jobs from the 2009-10 budget to make up for a multi-million dollar shortfall brought on by the recession. In all, CMS is considering cuts that could total more than $86 million.

“We've been meeting with people on an ongoing basis,” Gorman said earlier this week. “In some cases, we meet with groups. In some cases, the meetings are one-on-one. We are working hard to respect the integrity of our employees. This is a difficult time for them.”

Some educators with career status, more commonly known as tenure, are concerned that initial layoff letters from CMS didn't spell out their state-mandated rights, including the right to a hearing before the school board.

Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh said Gorman was sending letters Friday to employees clarifying how the layoffs could affect them and informing them of their legal rights.

Charlotte attorney John Gresham said he's been contacted by “five or six” affected educators, and is waiting to see what the latest letter says. But so far, he said, “the message that's been coming out has left a number of employees very concerned.”

Classroom teachers were again spared, but more than 300 could find themselves among later rounds of cuts if money from the federal stimulus or other sources doesn't alter the budget picture.

Gorman said in an e-mail to all employees that some information about the stimulus money is starting to trickle down from the federal government, but “it's still impossible to be sure what relief, if any, CMS will get.”

Other positions cut this week and announced Friday include career and technical education coordinators and “behavior modification technicians” who help deal with disruptive students. Friday's cuts also include jobs from finance, curriculum and instruction and family services, as well as schools.

Last week, CMS cut 106 jobs from the superintendent's office, communications, accountability, curriculum and instruction, the six “learning community” offices scattered around the county and the Achievement Zone, which oversees 11 struggling schools.

Taken with the cuts announced Friday, CMS has eliminated 213 jobs and saved $11.9 million. Only 30 of the jobs were vacant.

CMS has about 19,000 full-time employees serving its 174 schools. Last year's budget totaled $1.2 billion. Gorman will present his 2009-10 budget proposal to the school board later this month. The county commission will give final approval.

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600-plus get layoff alerts from TUSD


More than 600 employees were notified Friday that they are part of a massive layoff in the Tucson Unified School District.
Of the district's 3,800 certified employees, including teachers, librarians and counselors, 560 received notice that they'll be getting their pink slips if the Governing Board approves the list Tuesday.
Sixty-five of the district's 182 administrators, from principals to department directors, also were given notice.


While the layoffs were anticipated given the potential for deep state budget cuts, slipping student enrollment and the fact that employees needed to be notified by April 15 if they were going to receive a contract for the next school year, the list went deeper than many had expected.
All teachers in their first, second and third years with the district were given notice, with the exception of teachers in alternative education, special education and hard-to-fill positions such as highly qualified math and science teachers.
Last year at this time, only 40 elementary teachers were put on notice. But this year, the district is reacting to a worst-case scenario of a $63 million hit.
The pink slips might not be permanent, though. Alyson Nielson, TUSD's director of employment services, said the district will begin hiring employees back as soon as more information becomes available on the budget.
"We are trying to be conservative, but once we become a little more confident as the budget takes shape, we can start getting teachers back into positions. I expect we'll be in a situation to begin to recall staff before the school year is even out."
That doesn't mean it won't be disruptive.
Many principals have made conscious hiring decisions and have invested time in training teachers to match their own expectations. And because staff callbacks will be done largely by seniority and certification, schools won't necessarily get back their original staffers.
And some schools will be more profoundly impacted than others.
Dodge Middle School, which has a mature teaching stable, doesn't have teachers on the list, although like all of the other schools it has to make plans to cut its budget by 18 percent. Those plans are due to the district April 30. Principal Cathy Comstock said she expects in the worst case to lose an assistant principal and a librarian, but her staff otherwise wasn't immediately affected by the layoffs.
John Bellisario, the principal at Valencia Middle School, meanwhile, is losing 30 percent of his teachers. The far Southwest Side school is in a high-poverty area, has struggled with an "underperforming" label for two years and has high teacher turnover.
Bellisario, in his first year at the school, said it's a different campus already under his leadership. But he's worried about the impact the cuts will have.
"I'm really concerned because we have done a lot of work with professional development with our staff," he said. Getting a new staff, he said, "will be like starting from scratch. We've made a lot of progress and come a long ways, so this is a setback."
Nielson said the human-resources staff is trying to be sensitive to such concerns. Teachers who are part of the layoffs are filling out forms listing school preferences and credentials.
"Somebody at Broadway and Houghton, for example, would have a hard time getting to a school on the other side of town," she said. "We're going to try to work within those preferences."
Same with teaching philosophy. Teachers at Drachman Montessori Magnet, for example, have to be comfortable with Montessori methods, while teachers at Cholla High Magnet School should have some familiarity with its focus on International Baccalaureate programs.
"We might be biting off more than we can chew," Nielson acknowledged, given the scope of the layoffs, "but we're going to work really hard to make sure we find the best fit possible."
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 806-7754 or rbodfield@azstarnet.com.

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Saturday, April 04, 2009

UNEMPLOYMENT SKYROCKETS TO 8.5%


HIGHEST RATE SINCE 1983

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide swath of employers eliminated 663,000 jobs. It is fresh evidence of the toll the recession has inflicted on America's workers, and economists say there's no relief in sight.

If part-time and discouraged workers are factored in, the unemployment rate would have been 15.6 percent in March, the highest on records dating to 1994, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

The average work week in March dropped to 33.2 hours, a new record low.

"It's an ugly report and April is going to be equally as bad," predicted Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Last month's tally of job losses was slightly higher than the 654,000 that economists expected. The rise in the unemployment rate matched expectations.

Employers cut 651,000 jobs in February when the jobless rate was 8.1 percent, the same as initially estimated. January's job losses, however, were revised much higher, to 741,000 from 655,000.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the U.S. economy has lost a net total of 5.1 million jobs, with almost two-thirds of the losses occurring in the last five months.

The number of unemployed people climbed to 13.2 million in March. In addition, the number of people forced to work part time for "economic reasons" rose by 423,000 to 9 million. Those are people who would like to work full time but whose hours were cut back or were unable to find full-time work.

Looking forward, economists expect monthly job losses continuing for most -- if not all of -- this year.

However, they are hoping that payroll reductions in the current quarter won't be as deep as the roughly 685,000 average monthly job losses in the January-March period.

In the best-case scenario, employment losses in the present quarter would be about half that pace, some economists said. That scenario partly assumes the economy won't be shrinking nearly as much in the present quarter.

The deterioration in the jobs market comes despite a few hopeful signs recently that the recession -- now the longest since World War II -- could be easing.

Orders placed with U.S. factories actually rose in February, ending a six straight months of declines, the government reported Thursday. Earlier in the week, there was better-than-expected reports on construction spending and pending home sales. And last week a report showed that consumer spending -- an engine of the economy -- rose in February for the second month in a row -- after a half-year of declines.

But as the economic downturn eats into their sales and profits, companies are laying off workers and resorting to other cost-saving measures. Those include holding down hours, and freezing or cutting pay, to survive the storm.

Job losses were widespread last month. Construction companies cut 126,000 jobs. Factories axed 161,000. Retailers got rid of nearly 50,000. Professional and business services eliminated 133,000. Leisure and hospitality reduced employment by 40,000. Even the government cut jobs -- 5,000 of them.

Education and health care were the few industries showing any job gains.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession could end later this year, setting the stage for a recovery next year, if the government is successful in bolstering the banking system. Banks have been clobbered by the worst housing, credit and financial crises to hit the country since the 1930s.

Even if the recession ends this year, the economy will remain frail, analysts said. Companies will have little appetite to ramp up hiring until they feel the economy is truly out of the woods and any recovery has staying power.

Given that, many economists predict the unemployment rate will hit 10 percent at the end of this year. The Fed says unemployment will remain elevated into 2011.

Economists say the job market may not get back to normal -- meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate -- until 2013.

"There's going to quite a long haul before you see the jobless rate head down," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services.

To brace the economy, the Fed has slashed a key bank lending rate to an all-time low and has embarked on a series of radical programs to inject billions of dollars into the financial system.

And the Obama administration had launched a multi-pronged strategy to turn the economy around. Its $787 billion stimulus package includes money that will flow to states for public works projects, help them defray budget cuts, extend unemployment benefits and boost food stamp benefits.

The administration also is counting on programs to prop up financial companies and reduce home foreclosures to help turn the economy around.

Still, skittish employers announced more job layoffs this week.

3M Co., the maker of Scotch tape, Post-It Notes and other products, said it's cutting another 1,200 jobs, or 1.5 percent of its work force, because of the global economic slump. Fewer than half the jobs will be in the U.S., but include hundreds in its home state of Minnesota. The 1,200 figure includes cuts made earlier in the first quarter.

Elsewhere, healthcare products distributor Cardinal Health Inc. said it would eliminate 1,300 positions, or about 3 percent of its work force, and semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor Corp. said it will cut about 600 jobs, or 10 percent of its employees.


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Friday, April 03, 2009

The Job Market: April 2009


I didn't make the time to blog about the job market last month instead making time to talk to job hunters and work on a new site (www.freejobsearchtips.info) and the re-launch of TheResumeUniverse.com.

So I have a little bit of catching up to do.

The State of The Job Market (sounds like a Presidential address) is pretty well known:

Job cuts in January were over 740000
Job cuts in February were over 640000
In March, another 633000 workers lost their jobs (ADP believes the number was over 700000; we'll see if the government revises the figures further downward in the next few months

All told, unemployment is reported at 8.5%. That does not include people who are no longer collecting benefits or small business owners who are no longer paying themselves.

Unemployment rates were higher in February than a year earlier in all 372 metropolitan areas surveyed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

In summary, more than 13 million people are counted as being out of work and there is little that I am seeing to indicate that the employment picture is improving. Understand that, although my office is hubbed in the Northeast, the work that our firm is doing in recruiting is national in scope. Every part of the country is being severely impacted in every almost every field except one--health care.

Clearly, the health care industry has enormous labor shortages. Positions available are not simply for physicians but nurse practitioners, people to work in hospital administration, pharmacists . . . the list is long and seemingly endless.

Professionals in the energy industry is another high demand area currently.

I think the next demand area is going to be consultants . . . temps . . . people working on a temp-to-perm basis.

You see, comes the summer, companies will be dealing with vacation schedules and work slippages (we have a project due by January and we're already behind on it. Let's get some people in to help). If we sat and one other thing, I think we will have turned the corner. If not, like Punxsutawney Phil (for my overseas readers who may not follow this uniquely American tradition--Phil is a groundhop used to predict whether winter will be short or long), we will be in for a cold winter this year and a tough year next, too.




Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

© 2009 all rights reserved.

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