Another Round of HP Layoffs

geekroot's dad writes "AP News is reporting that Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard is 'fighting to stay competitive with formidable rivals like IBM and Dell' and is announcing 5,900 European job cuts "to safeguard the future" of the company. From the article: 'Michel Destot, the Socialist deputy mayor of the southern France city of Grenoble - where HP has one of its French plants - said the layoffs were "unacceptable" and demanded that HP managers also meet local politicians to discuss scaling back the job cuts.'" This round following the first cut back in July.

Comments

Re:I wish the mayor of Grenoble all the best.

[winkydink]

You don't need his permission, but based on the tenure of your employees, it can cost you as much as 18 months salary per person in severance to simply cut your losses and leave without negotiating.

Re:Ten percent unemployment?

[Doc Ruby]

The US "unemployment" numbers we're used to seeing are fiction. They've been cooked so many ways for so long that they now are a measure only of how many people the government wants to admit are willing to ask it for help this week. Which is why it's around 5-7% when it's reported. The real number that you're looking for is "employment market participation rate", or the percentage of people who can work (minus retired, disabled, children and a few prohibited others). That's currently around 65%, or 35% not participating. Realize that the people in addition to the 100% are the "prohibited" people I mentioned, all of whom still have to eat, who need someone's income to support them.

Part of worldwide job cuts announced in July.

[blueturffan]

"Another Round of HP Layoffs"

"This round following the first cut back in July."

Let's have some perspective here. This is not a new round of layoffs.

This article http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/050912/1163171.html?.v=1 clarifies that these 5900 European job cuts are part of the 14,500 worldwide job cuts announced in July.