"Some firms use scalpel, not ax, to cut costs" by Matt Richtel, The New York Times | December 22, 2008
Even as layoffs are reaching historic levels, some employers have found an alternative to slashing the workforce. They're nipping and tucking it instead.
A growing number are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations, and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts, and flexible schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.
Keep that in mind for later, please.
In some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.
"What we are doing is a symbolic gesture that has real consequences - it can save a few jobs," said William Flesch. He says more than 30 percent have volunteered for the pay cut, which could save at least $100,000 and prevent layoffs for several employees.
The only ones not hurting are the war profiteers -- they are expanding.
Companies say this economy plunged so quickly that they do not want to prune too much, should it just as suddenly roar back. They also say they have been so careful about hiring and spending in recent years - particularly in the last 12 months, when nearly everyone sensed the country was in a recession - that highly productive workers, not slackers, remain on the payroll.
I love the hypocritical insults hurled by the lying, agenda-pushing, pro-rich, pro-corporate MSM, don't you?
The downturn hit so hard, with its toll felt so widely through hits on pensions and 401(k) retirement plans, that employers and even some employees say it is better to accept minor cuts than risk more draconian steps.
Better to participate in your own demise (like train the guy who will take your job) than fight it!
The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek), Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time), and The Seattle Times (plans to save $1 million with a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers). There are also numerous mid-size and small companies trying such tactics.
To be sure, these efforts are far less widespread than layoffs, and outright pay cuts still appear to be rare. Overall, the average hourly pay of rank-and-file workers - who make up about four-fifths of the work force - rose 3.7 percent between November 2007 and last month, according to the latest Labor Department data.
Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm, published survey data last week that found 23 percent of companies planned layoffs in the next year, down from 26 percent that said they planned to do so in October. Companies say they are considering other cost cuts, like mandatory holiday shutdowns, salary freezes or cuts, four-day workweeks, and lower contributions to retirement and health care plans.
Companies seem particularly determined to find alternatives to layoffs in this recession, said Jennifer Chatman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's not just that organizations are saying 'We're cutting costs,' they're saying, 'We're doing this to keep from losing people.' "
She said the tactic builds long-term loyalty among workers and spares the company from having to compete again to hire and train anew.
The magnanimous feeling will probably pass, said Truman Bewley, an economics professor at Yale University who has studied what happens to wages during a recession. If the sacrifices look as though they are going to continue for many months, he said, some workers will grow frustrated, want their full compensation back, and may well prefer a layoff that creates a new permanence.
"These are feel-good, temporary measures," he said.
But John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that tracks layoffs, said employers are being driven not by compassion but by hard calculations based on data they have never had before. More than ever, he said, companies have used technology to track employee performance and productivity, and in many cases they know that the workers they would cut are productive ones.--more--"
Well, I don't know what to make of this barely three-day old article then:
"Employers still trimming jobs even as holidays near" by Associated Press | December 18, 2008
A growing number of companies are sending workers a grim holiday message: Head for the unemployment line.
Aetna Inc., Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., and Western Digital Corp. said yesterday they would cut a combined 4,900 jobs. And Eastman Chemical Co. said it would cut an unspecified number as it tries to slash costs by $100 million.
The announcements came a day before the government is expected to report that jobless claims remain near their highest point in 26 years. The downturn has spread far beyond the housing and banking businesses where it began.
"Things are changing so rapidly, and deteriorating so rapidly, that firms don't have a choice," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Global Insight.
Falling sales are squeezing companies' cash just as tighter credit makes it harder for them to borrow to fund operations, Behravesh said. The combination means some companies can't afford to wait until after the holidays to cut jobs.
Where did all that liquidity money go (check bankers' pockets)?
Many people with jobs are so fearful about their employment security that families are reducing spending, giving retailers one of the worst holiday shopping seasons in decades....
--more--"Yeah, Merry Xmas (as they kick you in the ass and out the door)!
So how do we break the tie? Whose going to be the arbiter?
"For many, vacation not a matter of choice" by Nicole C. Wong, Globe Staff | December 19, 2008
Most people look forward to taking time off during the holidays, but some employees won't have a choice this year. To save money, more companies are shuttering their offices between Christmas and New Year's and some even longer - often requiring workers to use vacation days or be furloughed without pay.
Holiday closings have been rolled out sporadically over the past 50 years at workplaces as diverse as factories and software companies when demand for products and client meetings dips. But this year more businesses are adopting the mandatory holiday hiatus to save money as the country plunges into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Others are expanding the practice to different departments or lengthening the required leave of absence....
************
Some smaller regional companies are using mandatory vacations more as a recruiting perk than a cost-cutting measure, since they earmark paid time off for the year-end closure, separating it from employees' annual vacation allotment. But that doesn't mean workers can leave work completely behind.
"During the shutdown, we ask our people to check e-mail twice a day and to be checking their BlackBerrys, to be checking their voicemail at work," said Maura FitzGerald, founder of Boston public relations firm Version 2.0 Communications, whose 15 employees will be off from Christmas Day until Jan. 5. "It's a lot easier now to give people this period of time off because people are addicted to checking e-mail and voicemail anyway."
Mission accomplished, 'eh, agenda-pushers?
PublishingWorks Inc. said shooing workers away for two weeks makes life easier for owner Jeremy Townsend. The independent publisher in Exeter, N.H., is granting paid vacation time to its two salaried staffers, including Townsend, but not issuing paychecks to the six hourly workers. And it saves $1,200 more, or 6 percent of its monthly operating budget, by not heating the old ballet-shoe factory where it prints and stocks books.
"I'm a real Scrooge with the heat because I don't like to fill up the oil tank too often," Townsend said. "If it's just me here, I just put on a sweater and turn the heat down. But generally the rest of them are annoyed about being chilly."
Yeah, I'm sure the staff just loved reading what bitchy whiners they are.
That ought to be a nice office reunion when he opens back up, huh?
