HP to slash 14,500 jobs

[gauguin57]

God. All those people's lives upended. Notice the stock market analyst calls the layoffs "a good start," but says Hewlett Packard was probably too conservative in the number of people it's getting rid of.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/19/technology/hp_restructuring/index.htm?cnn=yes

HP to slash 14,500 jobs

Computer and peripheral manufacturer aims to save $1.9B annually from job cuts, pension changes.


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Hewlett Packard is cutting 14,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its staff, the company announced Tuesday.

The company said the cuts, along with a restructuring of its retirement benefits, should save $1.9 billion annually. It will take a $1.1 billion restructuring charge related to the moves.


"I think they wanted to trim off the fat and not the muscle. They probably were a little conservative," said Michael Carty, stock market strategist, New Millennium Advisors, about the level of cuts. Carty said while these cuts are a good first step, he doesn't believe this is enough to make the stock attractive yet.

[Puzzler]

1. Oh yeah?

Well I think it would be a good start to lay off several thousand stock analysts.


-P

[gauguin57]

2. Yeah. No kiddin'

Don't you love how he talks about how this won't have a good enough effect on the HP stock price? Great. 14,500 families thrown into chaos, and we're worried it won't help the STOCK price enough.

Damn. Some days I can't stand reading the news.

[wallwriter]

3. But don't worry. Wal-Mart is hiring. So there is no net job loss.

[gauguin57]

4. Sooooo, next time I can't get my HP printer to talk to my computer ...

... I'll be patched through to Wal-Mart for tech assistance?

[wallwriter]

8. Nah, you'll be patched through to India.

The person at Wal Mart will be an ex-HP employee, now making minimum wage...

[Amonester]

36. "And the (much) higher long distance fee will be yours to pay."

Of course. What else is new?

:hangover:

[wli]

5. see motherjones' "sinister paradise" story

[JDPriestly]

6. 14,500 jobs.

This is devastating. I wish we could count up all the jobs lost to downsizing and outsourcing over the past twenty years.

I remember how Democrats in Congress warned on C-Span back in Fall 1985 about what would happen if the United States went for "free trade," how Americans would end up just serving up hamburgers for each other if "free trade" was accepted. The warnings were right, but have been forgotten.

Does anyone have access to Lexis-Nexis? Could someone search the Congressional Record database for September to November 1985 and see if the discussions on world trade that took place at that time are available? It would be really interesting to compare the warnings of the Democrats of that time to what has really happened.

This HP action is just one example of course of the horrible results of unfettered "free trade." Every time a job is lost, some young person reconsiders his or her career choice in order to avoid wasting several years of life preparing for a job that has no future and some older person looks back with regret on the choices that he or she made.

I personally have prepared for three different careers only to discover after investing much time and money in education that there were no more jobs available in the fields that had promised so much opportunity when I decided to enter them. I spent ten years of my life getting degrees in fields only to find that the job markets dwindled to nearly nothing or that, for some other reason, such as age, I could not get one of the few jobs available. It really hurts. I feel so sorry for people who have trained in IT. So many are out of jobs. HP's lay-offs is just another cut in the opportunities available to them. Most important, HP's action is a signal to young people that the IT wave is past, and that means that the US will become less competitive in the market for technical innovation. That's even sadder.

[Why Syzygy]

14. I wonder

if those doing support and other jobs in India handle calls from other countries or just the U.S.A.? China?
:argh:
How many pc's can a burger flipper buy? If they continue to downsize the middle class, who will need support?

SBC now has support from India. I spent a frustrating hour trying to straighten out a billing issue. The fifth person I spoke with was native English speaking. I have nothing against any civilization. Until they start taking our cash. And it's not THEM! As you point out, it is a direct result of "law" makers making very poor decisions (for the average) and rich ones for the corporations. We need a revolt.

btw, AOL used to have the WORST tech service in the industry. I've had three different dial-ups for the past three months, and have found they must have listened to customers and now offer the best support of the three.

[barb162]

19. but the middle class in Asia is growing and they will buy the goods

So who in big business cares about Americans? Yes we need a revolt

[JDPriestly]

26. I was just talking to a friend about a statistic we never see.

How much of the investment in U.S. real estate, stocks, bonds, business, etc. belongs in fact to foreign nationals and foreign interests. I doubt that I need to name the particular countries that I suspect own huge hunks of us. One of these days we will wake up to discover that we are indentured servants to the citizens of certain other foreign companies. We need to stop buying foreign junk and oil and become independent before we end up cleaning the restrooms in what now consider to be third world countries.

[Why Syzygy]

29. It seems obvious doesn't it? n/t

[DemoTex]

7. Big print: "JOBS SLASHED" .. small print: "pension changes."

The company also said it will, as of January 2006, freeze the pension and retiree medical-program benefits of current employees who do not meet defined criteria based on age and years of company service. Instead, it will increase its match to 401(k) plans to 6 percent of income from the current 4 percent cap.

The changes in benefits are expected to save the company $300 million annually, with the rest of the $1.9 billion in savings coming from reduced staffing.

The company said the benefit change will not affect those already retired or those close to retirement.

WTF is that about? As one whose pension was terminated on 3/31/2003 by an asshole who made over $10-million that year, I smell a rat.

[newportdadde]

10. Sounds like they raised the age limit you can have to retire with medical

Our company did that awhile back.

But hey.. dont worry they increased the match by 2%!!! :sarcasm:.

[barb162]

20. You know there's a rat there.

HP, I believe, was always known for its outstanding benefits. There they go.

[shantipriya]

9. HP Job Cuts

Sign of a strong economy which the Shrub has been touting

[stanwyck]

15. Shrub's buddies are making out

like bandits. They don't work...they just live off their stock options. Now the people who actually did the work at HP...or Enron...or Tyco...or HealthSouth...they're not feeling the "strong economy" these days.

[davidinalameda]

11. HP plans to cut 14,500 jobs

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/19/BUhp19.DTL&type=tech

Hewlett-Packard said today it plans to cut 14,500 jobs over the next year and a half as part of a drive to reduce cost and make the Palo Alto giant more competitive.

Most of the jobs will come from support functions, such as information technology, human resources and finance, the company said.


The cuts are expected to lead to annual savings of $1.9 billion, the company said.

[xchrom]

12. hmmm -- ''giant''?

they call hp a giant?
why?

[high density]

13. The economy is strong and getting stronger!

Yeehawwwwwwwwwwwwww!

[sadiesworld]

16. I'm guessing they can sell shit on e-bay or somesuch.

Nothing to see here. :grr:

[Kelvin Mace]

17. What do you say we drop

ol' Mikey a line and tell him how sorry we are that HP didn't destroy even more families so he would be happy about HP's stock price.

You can reach him at:

[e-mail]

[ramapo]

18. On and on....

Unfortunately this is nothing new to HP employees. Many have been living through these downsizings for many years, at Digital, Compaq and HP.

HP is just the latest company in the process of reducing itself to just a shell of what it once was.

There was a time when our economy replaced obsolete jobs with better jobs. Now the jobs are replaced with retail and other service positions.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, the U.S. had an incredible jobs engine built around the manufacture and support of technology. We used to make computers, and chips, and disk drives. We used to support the users from centers in the U.S. Programming used to be a career with great opportunity.

It is unbelievable but that is all gone and the politicians and economists cheer. What better way for a company to realize its' "full potential" than to fire 10% of the workers?

Crazy.

[barb162]

21. Yes, absolutely...this economy is being killed by big business,

Wall Street analysts and government honchos colluding to lower wages and benefits for people in this country while they pocket millions in profit. They ship all the jobs to these low wage countries. Well financial analysis is getting big in Asia too and these damned finance analysts pushing this anti-American worker shit will get nailed too.

[sendero]

28. What you said....

... I second, and third.

We are headed off a cliff and the "free traders" can't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see it, and the "captains of industry" that do see it don't care because they are making a killing.

They've got theirs jack, or so they think.

[midnight armadillo]

22. Let's not forget to thank Carly Fiorina for this

That woman put that once-great company on its current path towards total irrelevance. The purchase of Compaq was a total disaster.

[Chicago Democrat]

23. HP has (had, I guess) THE BEST product and customer support IMO

But guess what folks, they were the least profitable of all the makers. Dell was kicking their asses and making PROFIT.



L.C. Tiffany never made a dime either, that's why his products are treasures today.. they spent the money to get it right.

[pelagius]

24. I'm a bitter (but getting better) ex-Silicon Valley guy...

...who gets enraged when I hear someone talking about "trimming the fat". It's not fat, a**hole, it's people, some of whom are my friends. I dare one of these MBA twerps to sit f2f with one of these families and explain how their breadwinner is useless "fat".

[Robert Oak]

27. CEO is the FAT

Fucking whacked out BS...they ruin people's lives constantly to give themselves more bonus money and boost up the stock price.

So evil, so pathetic.

And they have ruined some great US companies...add HP to the list...
IBM, AT&T (Lucent), GE (Welsh evil incarnate with his sociopathic
mantra) and on and on.

[niallmac]

35. Wow, 14,500 were doing nothing.

Pretty nice actually of HP to have paid so many people so many years all those wages and benefits and they really weren't needed. Nowhere in anything I have read is the possibility of outsourcing mentioned. People just clean out their desks and the company produces without missing a beat and the stock goes up! Not even our Idaho Statesman asked the question about jobs going overseas. Wouldn't want to offend corporate HQ. I miss my LA Times investigative journalists.

[DS1]

25. CIO gets a hiring pay rate equivalent to 1,000 per lost job

Or, 15,000,000 including stock options

[nwliberalkiwi]

30. CEO Compensation?

What is the compensation for the CEO at HP?

[Eastside Blue]

31. Local news website ...

I found this ironic. My local news website had the "HP to slash 14,500 jobs" headline and, just a little down the page, they have a story titled "Gates: Why don't more kids want to be programmers?"

http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/bubgates_programmersCB.c66646b.html

:eyes:

[Deja Q]

32. Just before this announcement, they hired ONE person w/ a $15 mil salary.

Nice.

zdnet.com has that and tons more.

[osaMABUSh]

33. Where I work, PNC Bank, stated today it is cutting 3,000 jobs

PNC announced today that it is eliminating 3,000 jobs. I work at PNC in Pittsburgh and, hopefully, will still be employed at week's end. We'll see.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05200/540351.stm

Basically the CEO and other overpaid senior execs made some poor decisions over the last several years and, now, some employees are paying the price. In fact, some senior execs got raises over this new imitative to save money by cutting employees and other measures.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05198/538858.stm

[barb162]

34. And that is disgustingly common these days

The execs screw up, regular employees take the hit and the execs give themselves bigger bonuses.

[leesa]

37. Bring it on!

Everything for the CEOs and stockholders. Who will buy your junk in two or three years, you shortsighted fools?

[mbperrin]

38. Look at that * job machine go!

There go some more jobs!!!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

[jeanmarc]

39. That analyst is a moron

If anyone thinks that job cuts that happen every quarter for six quarters is 'good for morale', they don't deserve to be considered an 'analyst'. They deserve to be considered an ignorant asshole.

[Writer]

40. One point that we're overlooking here: not all the cuts will be in the US

In fact, HP hasn't yet decided where precisely the cuts will be... it still sucks, but we'll see cuts in Europe and Asia as well.