Layoff and Job Loss Report of Mid-January 2010
This is the Refile News job loss and layoff roundup for mid-January 2010. This report was written on January 18th, and compiled from over 100 sources. This report does not include city, county, and state government layoffs unless there was a significant event.
Alcoa’s Warrick Operations in Newburgh Indiana is planning to lay off up to 145 employees of its rigid packaging division by the end of March. The company said Tuesday that the layoffs are in response to a declining demand for its products.
Accent Marketing, one of Ouachita Parish Louisiana’s 10 largest private employers, will lay off virtually all of its 340-person work force here after the company lost the client that its Monroe call center serves. The call center had served Boost Mobile wireless customers.
ASTAR Air Cargo said it will lay off 303 pilots between March 6 and July 1 as a result of the reduced cargo flying demand from DHL, which slashed its U.S. express delivery operations in 2009 to international-U.S. shipments only in order to cut its $1 billion annual losses in the American market. The layoffs will affect pilots based at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.
Pfizer Inc. said it began sending notices Monday to the 680 workers at two former Wyeth facilities whose jobs are being eliminated. Pfizer, which acquired Wyeth for $68 billion last year, intends to eliminate 450 jobs effective March 12 at the Collegeville, Pa., site that formerly served as Wyeth’s pharmaceutical headquarters.
Honeywell Aerospace officials said a 265-person layoff reported to the state of Arizona stems from work being shifted from Phoenix to locations in Mexico and Czech Republic. Honeywell spokesman Bill Reavis the action is part of a 700-postion shift of aerospace positions from Phoenix to Chihuahua, Mexico, and Olomouc, Czech Republic.
The Longaberger Company announces it’s joining forces with another company and will lay-off more than 100 employees. The 100 employees of the Frazeysburg Center will have the opportunity to work at Exel and will retain their years of service. In addition, Longaberger is taking steps to align its basketmaking production by laying off 125 manufacturing employees.
Texas-based Guaranty Bank reported hundreds of layoffs. Just before Christmas, the Austin-based bank reported to the Texas Workforce Commission that 279 people would lose their jobs in February.
Lansing, Mich.-based Capitol Bancorp is divesting businesses in six states, including California and Ohio, to try to increase its capital ratios, according to Forbes.
Pilgrim’s Pride Corp, the U.S. chicken producer that recently exited bankruptcy, said on Tuesday that it would eliminate about 230 corporate and administrative positions during the first phase of its integration with Brazilian meat company JBS SA. About 160 of the primarily salaried positions being eliminated are based at Pilgrim’s Pride’s headquarters in Pittsburg, Texas, or in nearby Mt. Pleasant, Texas, the company said in a statement. Remaining cutbacks are spread out over other facilities.
AT&T union members protesting 160 layoffs scheduled in February planned a demonstration today at the Connecticut state Department of Public Utility Control following a DPUC hearing on whether telecommunications companies, including AT&T, are complying with the agency’s quality-of-service standards.
Tribune Co’s Los Angeles Times said it would close its printing operations in Orange County, California, resulting in about 80 layoffs.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram will reduce its staff by 28 employees and eliminate 17 open jobs.
Sandy Springs Georgia-based UPS said Friday it was cutting 1,800 management and administrative positions nationwide, using a mix of attrition, voluntary retirements and layoffs.
Officials at Bradford Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania say 59 people were let go to help close a $17 million shortfall.
In Puerto Rico the government laid off more than 2,400 government workers Friday — and was expected to target other jobs for elimination — to try and pare down a $3.2 billion deficit and avoid a government shutdown.
Seventeen full-time workers at the Pratt & Whitney jet engine plant in Maine have gotten word that they’re being laid off.
AOL is announcing a “limited number” layoffs today, as not enough staffers applied for the voluntary buyouts the company said it needed last November. At the time, AOL called for up to 2,500 volunteers—roughly a third of its global workforce to accept a buyout. Only 1,100 staffers volunteered for the buyout packages.
Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corp., says a drop in maintenance and modernization work will result in hundreds of layoffs this year, but the submarine manufacturer says that new hires will leave the company’s workforce numbers unchanged. A spokesman says executives of Electric Boat told a meeting outlining business objectives for 2010 that between 400 and 600 layoffs are possible in addition to 100 to 200 furloughs.
Fewer than 50 workers are expected to be laid off this week from Advertising.com, a major Baltimore-based subsidiary of AOL Inc., as part of a change in strategy for the Internet giant, according to company officials.
There were 400,000 layoffs in the nation’s travel industry in 2008 and 2009, but the industry expects to add 90,000 jobs in 2010, according to projections of the U.S. Travel Association, which predicts a modest increase in the nation’s travel this year. Really? This might be a case of what you wish for and what you get being two different things.
Companies in the U.S. cut an estimated 85,000 jobs in December, according to a private report based on payroll data.
The sharp drop in the work force — 661,000 fewer people — showed that more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work. Once people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted among the unemployed.
When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called “underemployment” rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in October. That’s just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994.
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