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

To safeguard de company?

[AnonymousYellowBelly]

Or to safeguard the top management body bonuses? =D To the guys complaining of the 'red' french... well, you should study their economic and political model. It is different, it has drawbacks, it has advantages. It is not perfect, just as the US' system is not perfect either.

Re:To safeguard de company?

[QuantumRiff]

What do you mean the US system of business is not perfect, its damn perfect!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go work for 12 more hours today, to pay for the trip to the dentist, since my current employer cut back health insurance. I had good insurance at my last company, but the company laid us off, and bought some new lear jets, gave a bonus to the CEO that only makes $25Million a year, and bumped their stock price 25 cents! LONG LIVE CAPITALISM!

Death Spiral

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad Earnings for Quarter ->
CEO Saves Money by Cutting Sales & Engineering ->
Better Earnings ->
Bonus for CEO ->
No New Products in Queue + Reduced Sales ->
Bad Earnings for Quarter ->
CEO Saves Money by Cutting Sales & Engineering -> ...

rinse, lather, repeat

Re:Put all right wing anti French stuff under here

[FST777]

With the risk of sounding too anti-American (even for /.), this sounds truly cold-war-anti-socialist-pseudo-intellectual-econom ic-bullshit to me. After WW-II, the whole lot of western democratic Europe profited greatly from several forms of socialistic government. The fact that the economy had gone down-hill in the last few years says nothing about that.

The European economies have grown fast and heavy in the last 30 years, and are taking a break right now on the heels of the world economy, led by the US economy. Unemployment might be a bit of a problem these days, but in the west of Europe, poverty rates are MUCH lower than in the US.

Socialist regulations did that. And it worked for almost half a century. Look at the charts when you have the chance. We're now back at the same level as we were in 1999. That is not a big downfall. (btw, since 1999, all over Europe governments have reformed the socialistic regulations. Might just have been the wrong decision)