NightBlogger

Source: KSLA — “We lost 2 billion dollars and like any other business we have to stay afloat.” And to keep from sinking, the United States Postal Service is considering cutting thousands of jobs nationwide. Lavelle Pepper with the post office in Shreveport says they too are feeling the affects of the same disease hitting the country… a struggling economy. “We employ about 685,000 people. If we do layoffs it would include clerks, carriers, mail handlers across all crafts.”

Pepper says the postal service is looking to eliminate 40,000 jobs nationwide. There’s not an exact number on how many of those could be from the Ark-La-Tex. Pepper says workers who are not part of union with six or less years of service would likely be the first on the chopping block. “We’ve identified 16 thousand people that are not covered under contract. We’ll see what those numbers add up to.”

The postal service is also offering early retirement packages to workers over the age of 50 who have more than 20 years on the job. But according to pepper it may not be enough. “The preliminary numbers look like it’s not going to be enough and we may have to do something else.” But despite what may happen, Pepper says customers will not feel the pain they’re going through. “The general public when it takes place won’t se any decrease in service.. They largely won’t know about it.”

(Bloomberg)
General Motors Corp., the largest U.S. automaker, is cutting additional salaried jobs and suspending some employee benefits as it tries to conserve cash amid slumping sales in the U.S. and Europe. Salaried employment will have to be reduced by more that the 5,000 jobs originally planned, GM said in a letter to executives. The Detroit-based company will also temporarily halt matching payments of as much as 4 percent to nonunion employees’ 401(k) savings plans Nov. 1 and end programs to assist with tuition and adoptions in January, spokesman Tom Wilkinson said. “The global economic outlook remains very concerning,” GM said in the letter signed by Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner and Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson. “As a result, actions are being taken throughout GM’s global operations to address our increasing need to conserve cash.” More

(Bloomberg) – American International Group Inc.’s long-term counterparty rating was cut to A- from AA- by Standard & Poor’s. The U.S. rating company in a report cited a “combination of reduced flexibility in meeting additional collateral needs and concerns over increasing residential mortgage-related losses.” S&P also lowered AIG’s short-term counterparty credit rating to A-2 from A-1+, and cut its counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on most of AIG’s insurance operating subsidiaries to A+ from AA+. The ratings remain on watch for a possible further downgrade, S&P said.

Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs over the next three years as it digests its recent purchase of EDS. HP expects to replace roughly half of these positions over the next three years to create a global workforce that has the right blend of service delivery capabilities to address the diversity of its markets and customers worldwide. The company said that, once it has finished with the cuts, it expects the moves to save $1.8 billion in costs annually. It said it does plan to reinvest in other areas. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) - GMAC LLC said on Wednesday it plans to cut 5,000 jobs at its Residential Capital LLC mortgage unit, or 60 percent of that work force, and shut its 200 GMAC Mortgage retail offices to combat persistently weak housing and credit markets. GMAC also plans to stop offering home loans through its Homecomings broker channel, and is evaluating strategic alternatives for its GMAC Home Services and noncore mortgage servicing businesses. It said it keep offering mortgages “where there is a secondary market to sell the loans.” The cutbacks suggest deepening problems for GMAC’s owners. A group led by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP bought a 51 percent stake from General Motors Corp in 2006. The automaker owns the remaining 49 percent. More

Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea. Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets. Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert. “They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday,” claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda. More

DUBLIN, Ohio — Health care products and services company Cardinal Health Inc. says it will cut 600 jobs as it streamlines its business into two primary segments. Cardinal said the restructuring announced Tuesday will group its units into a Healthcare Supply Chain Services segment and a Clinical and Medical Products segment. Chairman and CEO R. Kerry Clark said the changes will save money and make the company more efficient. Cardinal said the job cuts will include 160 positions that are currently open and will not be filled. Employees whose jobs are eliminated will be offered severance benefits. The company said it will take a $63 million dollar charge against earnings to pay for the restructuring. More

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday announced plans to cut 250 positions across the company, including 150 positions in editorial, in a new effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further cost-cutting step, the newspaper will reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%. “You all know the paradox we find ourselves in,” Times Editor Russ Stanton said in a memo to the staff. “Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money.” More

AMR Corp. will shrink to its smallest workforce in two decades by reducing its headcount by 6,500 or more jobs by year’s end. The 8 percent cut in jobs will leave AMR, parent of American Airlines Inc., with fewer than 80,000 jobs, a level it hasn’t seen since 1988. In a first step toward making the cuts, American has informed its flight attendants’ union that it may furlough 900 flight attendants as of Aug. 31. “These are difficult but necessary changes, given the unprecedented challenges we face with overcapacity in the industry, skyrocketing fuel prices and a worsening U.S. economy,” AMR spokesman Tim Wagner said Wednesday. More

Employers cut payrolls by 62,000 in June, the sixth straight month of nationwide job losses, underscoring the economy’s fragile state. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent. The latest snapshot of business conditions, released by the Labor Department on Thursday, showed continued caution on the part of employers who are chafing under high energy prices and are uncertain about how long the economy will be stuck in a sluggish mode, reflecting fallout from housing, credit and financial troubles. Since the beginning of 2008, roughly 400,000 people have lost their jobs, CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor reports. More

CNN—Conglomerate Siemens AG, wracked by a wide-ranging corruption scandal, will cut up to four percent of its work force worldwide, or about 17,200 jobs, a pair of newspapers reported Saturday. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that the Munich-based company was set to shed the jobs — mostly white-collar and administrative — without citing any sources. The Wall Street Journal also reported a similar figure, citing a person who was familiar with the matter. Siemens did not comment on either report, only to say that it did not comment on market rumors. The German paper said that of the cuts to the company’s global work force of approximately 435,000 staffers, some 6,400 could come in Germany, where it employs around 136,000 people. More

Citigroup, the New York-based global bank, is set to lay off thousands of people from its worldwide investment-banking division, the Wall Street Journal said. Staff losing their jobs are expected to be notified on Monday, the Journal said. The job cuts are part of a plan to reduce about 10 per cent of the investment banking group’s 65,000 staff, it said. Citigroup officials have made no comment. Citigroup, along with much of Wall Street, is recovering from bad investments after losing billions of dollars on mortgages and loans to already indebted people. It was not immediately clear if the cuts were in addition to the 9,000 announced in April when it also reported a $5.1 billion first-quarter loss. About 4,200 job cuts were also announced late last year. More

DALLAS (AP) — Continental Airlines said Thursday it is cutting 3,000 jobs and reducing capacity by 11 percent, citing record fuel costs that have pushed the industry into its worst crisis since 2001. It also said its two top executives will forgo pay for the rest of the year. The job cuts represent about 6.5 percent of the company’s work force of 45,000.

Houston-based Continental said it will begin pulling back on flights in September, when departures on its mainline operations will drop about 16 percent below September 2007 levels. Fourth-quarter capacity will fall 11 percent. More

Raw Story
Seeking to find a way to win over fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” members of their own caucus, House Democrats are planning to ax a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits to find a way to pay for the Iraq war. The move comes against the wishes of the Senate: the unemployment benefit passed without incident there, with 75 senators supporting the final bill.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told the Washington Post yesterday that the unemployment insurance provision would “probably not” be part of the final package of war and domestic spending.

The bill provides funding for President Bush’s Iraq and Afghan wars. It also provides a new educational benefit for military servicemembers — at $52 billion. The Senate has passed Bush’s war bill already, at $250 billion for 10 years; the House bill settles at $165 billion, and also includes funding for some domestic measures. More

Photo Josef Rousek

Sun Microsystems swung to a loss in the fiscal third quarter, stunning investors who were expecting a healthy profit from the server and software maker despite a weakening U.S. economy. The Santa Clara-based company also forecast flat revenues for the fourth quarter and revealed plans to jettison between 1,500 and 2,500 jobs as it tries to snap out of a sudden financial funk that has snapped its streak of five straight profitable quarters.
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