Have you heard the one about the billionaire CEO laying off thousands of workers?
On the June 26 broadcast of the CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley announced that while “companies aren’t cutting so many jobs as before,” there’s an exception:
One company that’s still shedding jobs–lots of them–is technology pioneer Hewlett-Packard. That’s part of the strategy of Meg Whitman, the CEO, hired to save the company.
Pelley gives viewers a quick rundown of all of Whitman’s successes, and wonders: “Can Whitman assemble a happy face now for HP?”
The segment by correspondent Anthony Mason portrayed Whitman as a bold turnaround artist. “When she took over Hewlett-Packard nearly three years ago,” Mason says, “Meg Whitman literally tore down the executive walls.” Viewers learn that the old office had stuffy walls, and Whitman wanted cubicles instead.
Part of the CEO’s bold transformation plan, Mason explains, is a pretty simple one: “Whitman has announced up to 50,000 job cuts–about 14 percent of the company’s workforce when she took over.” He goes on to say that it’s hard for a company to “make these kind of transitions”–executive-speak for “massive layoffs”–but the segment very quickly turns into a promotion for a new product, “a radical redesign of computing,” as the CBS correspondent puts it.
Mason closes the segment with this: “The CEO who built eBay knows Silicon Valley only rewards those who roll the dice.”
It might be worth pointing out that the jobs-slashing CEO–who is already a billionaire–doesn’t have to wait for this bet to succeed in order to receive a nice payday. Her compensation last year was $17.6 million last year (USA Today, 2/3/14). CBS–which has a record of doing puff pieces about corporate CEOs (FAIR Action Alert, 11/26/12)–wants viewers to believe that the overpaid CEO who’s bold and risky enough to try and fix a company by firing tens of thousands of employees deserves this kind of attention.
And what about the workers who are shown the door? Well, there’s no nightly newscast report about them.
When HP was thriving, it never fired or laid off anyone to reduce workforce.
The recent management has decreed that research and innovation are not a priority, and flushed the corporation down the toilet.
From Wikipedia: In May 2013, Bloomberg L.P. named Whitman “Most Underachieving CEO” among big-company CEOs whose stocks have turned in the worst numbers relative to the broader market since the beginning of each CEO’s tenure. HP’s stock led the list by underperforming by 30 percentage points since Whitman took the job
It could be worse, I guess. California almost got her for governor.
It’s more a matter of “slice and dice”
Than “rolling the dice”, wouldn’t you say?
And in the news; from one of the workers there at HP, one of the things she is doing is ridding the company of any and all “Old-timers” so they can install newer, less salaried employees (i.e. the Cyber-mill equivilent of minimum pay) while selling off the assests of the Company to another Chinese corporation.
Essentially what she has done is create an atmosphere of hate, greed, and distrust, and is still using 1814 corporate techniques that were outdated even in the 50’s. to beat the morals of the Employees in to the dust.
Look to the upcoming years, when H.P. will not be an american company, if it exists at all as the result of the Vulture Capitalism of her people.
HP has had falling production for years and employment volume reflects production. So what. The board would fire you for not trimming jobs. Who are you to cry baby rather than give HP the solution that will increase production and increase employment.
What is your forecast on the continuing shrinking size of our economy? Months, years?
Who are you to cry baby rather than give HP the solution that will increase production and increase employment.
Once again another “Brillant” comment: lets send all the jobs overseas, so the american people have none, and then wonder why the economy here can’t get going.
On the one hand, being a CEO isn’t what it used to be. An 11 year old can do it so I am thinking why do we need these people?
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Kids Inc: Meet the youngsters running their own companies.
It is not uncommon for shrewd high-tech chief executives in California to keep their cards close to their chest until they are absolutely ready for a product launch. It is called being in “stealth mode”.
Thomas Suarez is typical in that way. He is working on a patent-pending 3D printer which, he says, will work 10 times faster than the MakerBot model he uses at home.
But in most other ways, Thomas is anything but typical. At 15, he is a seasoned businessman.
The teenager tinkers with 3D printing technology when he’s not in school or codes new apps for smartphones or Google Glass (which he wears all the time outside of school).
He also has his own company, CarrotCorp, formed when he was 11 years old and making his first apps.
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Sp I am thinking we need to rid ourselves of people like Whitman who have sold their humanity for the dross of coin, and make them work for a living in the world they have helped create. Fire her, pay the kid a couple thousand and let Whit(less)man actual earn a paycheck on the lines of H.P., and we would even support her moving to China to work there for her Corporate Zombie Heads.
HP is also on the list of BDS companies–those to be boycotted for work with the Israeli government. I sold my stock.
I once worked for a company bought by Chainsaw Al Dunlap.
Another worthless psychopath darling of the media.
Looks like he paid some big fines but escaped going to jail, like most corporistocrats, it seems. Too bad.
Reading about the massive job cuts at HP, brings to my mind a proverb about the fact that ‘evolution is a fact, not a theory.’ It appears that ‘work has changed mankind from monkeys to the sophisticated entrepreneurs, and that capitalism is changing them back into monkeys.’ What are we as human beings in our society, if we are denied jobs? What is our role, function, if we are expandable, like some old machines that had become obsolete? Greed is an illness, a social malady, a cause of many criminal consequences, including murder, and wars. Greed is a cancer that must be removed, if our society is to SURVIVE. One must read a great article about GREED written by Julian Edney to get a more complete understanding about the consequences to our society based on GREED.
GREED
by Julian Edney (1)
An essay concerning the origins, nature, extent and morality of this destructive force in free market economies. Definitions. Paradoxes and omissions in Adam Smith’s original theory permit – encourage – greed without restraint so that in a very large society over two centuries it has become an undemocratic force creating precipitous inequalities; divisions in this society now approach a kind of wealth apartheid, and our values are quite unlike Smith’s: this is an immensely wealthy society but it is not a humane society. Wealth and poverty are connected, in fact recent sociological theory shows our institutions routinely design inequality in, but this connection is largely avoided in texts and in the media, as is the notion that greed is a moral wrong. Problems created by greed cannot be solved by technology. We are also distracted by already-outdated environmental rhetoric, arguments that scarcities and human suffering follow from abuse of our ecology. Rather, these scarcities are the result of what people do to people. This focus opens practical solutions. ….
Once you’ve destroyed the essence of the company – in this case those engineers and technicians generating new concepts and efficiencies – you cannot save the company, no matter how many employees you discharge into oblivion. Your future is the same as theirs, Meg.
In 2004 big companies got tax breaks to repatriate money from overseas, then promptly slashed and burned thousands of jobs.
HP – 14.5 billion – 14, 500 layoffs
Pfizer – 37 billion – 10,000 layoffs
Colgate – 800 million – 4000 layoffs
Merck – 15.9 billion – 7000 layoffs
Ford – 900 million – 30,000 layoffs
Bold indeed. How long until they get to do it again right under your nose, and have some of you claim it will create jobs and boost production?
The bonus of course is the tax holiday in 2004 was aptly named… wait for it…
“the American Jobs Creation Act”
I was one of those engineers whose jobs were slashed by HP and so was my husband. They shipped our jobs to China and Israel and had the nerve to give us a 5% pay cut in 2008 before they did that, due to the dip in the economy. We got back a lump sum a few years later, but they never restored are salaries to the original number. Whitman is more of the same-the previous CEO was just as horrendous.
People please wake up.A CEO works on behalf of stock holders who demand an uptick in that companies stocks.If the stocks go up the CEO is compensated.And if that means firing everyone, and installing robots so be it.That said -if the government wants workers retained, cut corporate taxes.At 36% the highest in the world among all major players.I was just in Ireland.13% there.This is so disingenuous.The countries CEO(Obama)makes conducting business here harder and harder.Then he blames others for the economies downturns.
Nothing said in the above post makes a lick of sense when compared to the facts in the story about HP or corporate taxes in general. The corporate tax rate for many of these un-American companies is zero or less. They employ hundreds of subsidiaries in order to hide and wash profits. Is THAT going to change with a lower rate? Nonsense.
Besides, Obama is doing nothing different from any Republican. You think stashing money overseas began in 2008? They ALL treat the market as though it was the entire economy. It is heads I win and tails you lose for USA Inc.
Yed their is this weird idea in Lib America that corporations are breaking the law when they get what you call a tax break.No….they are playing by the rules the house(gov)sets up.Their are things the government cant or wont pay for in the cost analysis.So if a corporation does…they get a tax break.Everyone I know in business has incorporated.And everyone pays taxes. 30 plus of their corporation.And another 15-20+ on their private.Show me one big company that in actuality does not pay out from their bottom line a government imposed distribution or taxation.Of course tea party people like myself want a flat tax.Zero lupe holes for people AND corporations.Want to know why it wont happen?Because the government looses control.The left looses its spurious argument of paying your fair share.So just remember that ALL lupe holes are set up…. and accepted BY the government for THIER benefit.How could it be otherwise?The government plays dumb so they then can double dip.
“”No….they are playing by the rules the house(gov)sets up.””
Like always – totally and ignominiously wrong!!!
The Corporation who own the Governments Tits and Balls make up the rules as they go along. That is why there are thousands of ‘Hundred Million dollar a year’ Lobbyist sitting in Washington writing tax breaks which are rubber stamped by their puppet representative. We the people can’t get those breaks, but the moron trolls of The Fux Snooze Nitwork all bellow the same mindless sheeple bleat about ‘poor corporations’. They have zero clue about reality since they have the Uber-richt Corpse-press media news feed jacked up their hind side, allowing them to spew those little pile of BS like above with no thought.
“”That said -if the government wants workers retained, cut corporate taxes. At 36% the highest in the world among all major players””
Still wrong and getting wronger. Do you actually have any schooling at all or is the entirety of your history based on what your Troll God Tush Limburger and the Cock Brother spew? I mean your so moronic I’ll bet you didn’t even know that the during the “halcyon days” that you so opine for, the Corporate tax rate was double that,and nobody was having an issue except the greedy little bastards who were too stupid to make in it the real world.
How about you actually go back to a real school, and learn real history. Not the Fux Snooze “stay asleep and we will use your lips” made up history from Becker head and his “magic white board”. And you really should be reading up on the reality of the Fascist Ideals you are espousing here. In both Germany and Italy the heads of the government pushed for the lowest corporate taxes, while dumping it on the working class and doing their best to break any and all unions, and removing all the peoples rights. Read up on Il Duce and his ‘Corporate world’.
Oh and your Irish “13%” isn’t the only taxes they pay. If maybe you could actually find another iota of intelligence and talk with the people who actually live there, not the moron crew of the Fux Snooze Nitwork, you would find in reality the tax situation isn’t what you think it is. But then, that would actually require you to find someone who knows what is going on. It’s called the “World Wide Web” for reason, it’s not only americans who have it. But I realize that is scary having to talk with someone who actually has intelligence and learning and isn’t a walking zombie for the Corpse-press that you feel the need to fawn over with obsequious idolatry.
Last Hint that both you and your little Goddess Meg here are full of the cow byproduct. During the run up for Governor, wherein Meg was demanding that all businesses should be made gods and the people slaves,as propounded by the Cock Brother Priests, She tried to shame the people into anointing her goddess by claiming that “she wanted to bring back the type of Government that was around when she first started business in the 70’s.” Only like all moron’s from the Uber-richt Fascist club she didn’t bother to do her homework, and Jerry Brown needed only to hold up the picture of him, when he was Governor, in the 70’s when Meg the Twit was supposed to such a wonderful business person.
So Bright boy, where do you think all this money is going to come from, for your Corporate Gods? When they finally pay no taxes at all, and yet will still demand more and more, faster and faster, just where do you think the money is going to come from? Hint Your Gods of Wal-mart have already shown us; they make 15 billion in Profit, 2 Billion of which, come from the welfare coffers funded by the paychecks of the American people. Is that your ideal world, working for free for a coporate lord that would as soon shit on you, as look at you? Pretty sad.
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