Thursday, December 06, 2012

You’d do ‘Neutron’ Jack proud!

Jobs cuts, during recession become a ‘necessary’ evil; and this is the only quick solution for companies...

The thrice-marrried, former GE CEO, Jack Welch could never find another reason to be happier. Excuse us here; we’re not talking about Jack becoming a father again (he has already celebrated 73 years glorious years on the planet for Chrissake!); but about others preaching the layoff culture at GE, many years after he quit GE (strict reference to his act of firing about 120,000 ‘bottom 10%’ employees). And it is his two ‘action-packed’ decades long terrific tenure at GE that on one hand deserves all the credit for a tub-thumping appreciation of 4,100% in GE’s market value (making it the most valuable company by 2001!) and on the other, seems to have created a model of leadership that fellow-American MNCs and those from the Eurozone & First World have begun to emulate. Yes, we’re talking about the lay-off announcements that were made in the past week; there was GM confirming 2,000 cuts, Caterpillar – 12,000; Pfizer – 19,500; Sprint-Nextel – 8,000; Intel– 6,000; Philips – 6,000; Corus – 5,500; Corning Inc. – 3,500; ING – 7,000; Texas Instruments – 3,500; Home Depot – 7,000; Microsoft – 5,500; Hitachi – 27,000; Ford – 1,200, UAL – 1,000… and the list continues.

Reacting to these announcements, an emotional US President, Barack Obama said, “These are not just numbers on a page... these are working men & women whose families have been disrupted and whose dreams have been put on hold…” Indeed, Obama puts his emotions in good light here, but are not these actions mere rampages sans rationale?

We need to question the very ‘fundamental necessity’ of job-cuts, especially with unemployment rates having grown meteorically from 4.7% in December 2007 to 7.2% in December (a 15-year high!) as per a January 2009 report by IHS Global Insight The report further suggests how during just the last four months, 2 million jobs were slashed – representing 80% of total cut during the current downturn. Worst, the report proves how, we are “just halfway to the total job loss anticipated during this cycle,” thereby forecasting the unemployment rate to rise above 9% by early-2010 (highest in 30 years). Surely, we are on the verge of making some ‘bitterly forgettable’ history! 
 
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

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