Slashdot Mirror
Sharp Overwhelmed By Volunteers For Early Retirement
jfruh writes "Sharp, the Japanese LCD supplier in dire financial straits, is trying to cut staffing by offering an early retirement package. Unfortunately, it seems Sharp employees are eager to abandon a sinking ship. The company was planning on cutting its headcount by about 2,000 employees with the move; instead, it had to cut short the program after getting nearly 3,000 applicants."
Let's just hope this doesn't make Sharp dull...
...pretty smart for the employees who applied, though.
Japan's demographics (older than most other countries as an average) do tend to skew things upward a bit on their own, but think about it - instead of getting laid off or cut off, you get a steady income and go work somewhere else at the same time (and even while searching for another job, it's at least something to subsist from).
Beats the hell out of getting a pink slip and nothing from the deal.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
your workforce...
Why is this a bad sign?
Why should people in their mid 50's or older not be perfectly happy to stop working while still being paid? The company I work with is closing down the IBM mainframes and a lot of people are leaving rather than re-training. That comment about a "sinking ship" is totally missing the point, the ship may or may not be sinking but people who have 30 years of working no longer feel they have something to prove. Of course the retirement package on offer has to be adequate but this one certainly seems to be that!
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Beats the hell out of getting a pink slip and nothing from the deal.
So you're saying that Sharp has...sharp employees?
Ezekiel 23:20
Early retirement is one way to cut the work force – however, if done poorly it can lead to a brain drain. The more oversubscribed it is the more likely this will happen.
Also, you want to downsize as efficiently / cheaply as possible. The oversubscription suggests that the HR people could have gotten the size reduction they needed with less generous terms.
Is this article trying to point out that the company having to offer retirement packages is going to hurt them financially or talent wise?
This is Japan. Their CEOs are known to take paycuts when the company tanks. This is a different culture. The retirees probably live with the children and raise the grandchildren. Sharp probably just has an aging workforce like every other developed country and the retirement package was good enough.
Your definition of socialism and the dictionary's definitions differ significantly in their breadth:
Merriam webster's definition:
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2
a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Your definition is to take only part of the first option and ignore everything else. I'd say your narrow view on the word is where your problem lies.
Also, was Sharp compelled to do this because it was best for their company, or because someone would go to jail if they didn't? The former is capitalism, the latter is a form of socialism.
A lot has been written about Sony, especially in Japan where it was THEIR giant taking on the world. Sony USED to be a tech company run by techs. Googles 20% work on your own project sound nice? Pah! At Sony entire teams could work 100% on stuff that nobody knew could ever work. Then around the millennium a new guy was put in charge and he did not come up through the company as a tech but was strictly management. He too wanted to streamline the business and get rid of dead wood old engineers. It worked BRILLIANTLY. Not only was the package VERY attractive so all who could, took it but new jobs were waiting with little upstart companies like Samsung but I don't suppose you ever heard of them. Oh wait, isn't that the dingy Korean company that makes cheap Japanese knock-offs. Well, they can never compete because Japan has all the know-how locked up in job contracts... OOOOPS!
It was an epic brain drain and one Sony never really recovered from. It wasn't their only mistake but it was a hell of a nail in the coffin. Sharp did better, Sharp still has a reputation for Japanese made (and for the very old and very young, there was a time when Japanese made meant quality of an insane degree even the swiss found hard to beat. A Sony TV just worked, yes it was expensive but it just worked. And then management took over, streamlined the business and that stopped. Samsung quality is catching up but only because Japanese quality is going down.
Note that the asian giants on the rise are NOT streamlining their business and all the western ex-giants have streamlined themselves to dead. The simple fact is that pure managers can't see the next hit, the Walkman and the PS were things no manager could have seen. For sony to enter the console industry against the giants in that sector was considered insane.
When the techs left and management took over, Sony lost its edge. In the west people only know Sony the electronics giant same as say Nintendo. Did you know Nintendo once made a vacuum cleaner? Post WW2 Japan grew a tradition of little workplaces were people were busy trying to come up with anything to produce and export. Because with no natural resources and a devastated economy, that was the only way Japan was going to make money. Building thingies, firs cheap and crap, then cheap and okay and finally expensive and bloody good. And they did this at the cost of western companies that were to busy stream lining their businesses.
If your young, name a WESTERN TV maker. That actually still makes TV's. Every western household has a TV but who supplies them? The asians. Yeah, that worked out well, for the asians but the likes of Philips? Shadows of their former self as they focussed on their core compentency in existing shareholder meetings. PIty that it turned out loosing money is their core compentency.
You can see it with Hostess. I said it before, as a EU person I can't see the big deal, their snacks just ain't that good. When was the last time they extended their product range in a significant way? And I don't mean a chocolate twinkie but as a TV company, making a walkman, producing a game console. Look at how much flack MS is getting for daring to go into hardware. Streamlining your business is just another way of saying "we are closing down". In tech, the next big thing needs to be researched yesterday if you want to launch it tomorrow. Except the real time line is measured in decades and you will have many failed research projects in the mean time. But you got to do that if you want that massive hit.
Another reason that racing to the bottom never works is because there is always someone at the bottom waiting to take your place. Sharp can't keep in the display race, that just means the next iPad's displays will be all Samsung, now boosted by the free to hire Sharp engineers.
Surely Sharp knows the history of its major rival. Things must be dire indeed to follow the path of certain doom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Early retirement is one way to cut the work force – however, if done poorly it can lead to a brain drain.
I'd say it almost always does, because the people most likely to volunteer are the ones most likely to find another job quickly.
One company I worked for decided to lay off about a third of the staff, and half of the staff volunteered to go. They got rid of the third they thought they needed the least, which pissed off the remaining volunteers enough that most of us just found new jobs and quit.
They should use an auction model where everyone gets the same benefit irrespective of when they sign up for early retirement.
The company offers a package, tells people the package will get better every day. Individuals can sign up for the early retirement and everyone who signes up will get the package offered at the time that the quota is met. That way employees have an incentive to sign up early and the company gets the minimum cost.
Damn, I should have patented that!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Maybe it's good for them. Kodak's retirees are getting the short end of the stick in the form of reduced payments so creditors get more money...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The guy working for $1 owns a large chunk of the company. He's paid in either new or pre-existing stock options.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
But what galls me is that the employees are the most strident defenders of this system. Oftentimes it is the same employees who shout vociferously about freedom and liberty. They talk till cows come home about how the entrepreneur is the essence of America and how great it would be if everyone and their brother becomes a small business owning entrepreneur. But one of the significant impediment for starting a new business is the lack of healthcare at the initial phases for the entrepreneur and his/her family.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Then they haven't saved enough for retirement.
The Quebec Government did this in 1997 in the healthcare sector (since healthcare is public) granting retirement 10 years early to 4000 nurses and 1500 doctors, which became an *immediate* problem. We are *still* recovering from this. An entire industry was built around this catch-up knowledge transfer required to fill the gap. It will take another 10-15 years to fill the gap and massive healthcare issues it has created, and will have cost more than the money saved.
The severance package at the place I work is a lot better than "2 weeks pay per year of service". I believe Japan has fairly strong employees' protection so Sharp had to make the package attractive.
They did.
I don't live in the US (either) but if I did, walking the Appalachian Trail while still being young enough to make it would be very attractive. A few weeks around the Grand Canyon, there are a lot of things to do if you aren't tied down to going in to work to get paid.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting.
we do not know how significant 1000 extra employees are (other than a 50% increase in expected numbers). What would make it more meaningful would be to know the size of the population of employees who were given the offer (what if 5000 employees were given the offer, what if 500,000?).
so there is not enough info in the summary to make that statement.
de-linking will also stop some of the hours games / temping that some companies do to get out of needed to give people health insurance through the job.
A suggestion: RTFA. The second link provides the answer.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Why is this a bad sign? Why should people in their mid 50's or older not be perfectly happy to stop working while still being paid?
They can be happy of course. I'm sure it's great for them. I would take that option in a heartbeat, just so I could continue doing the stuff I'm interested in.
But for the company, it means the veterans would rather be doing something else. And it implies that it's not a great place to work.
I can two types of people who would jump at the chance for early retirement:
1) People actually close to retirement
2) People who are not close to retirement, but know they have the skills to get another job
The person who is barely scraping by at their job? Not going to jump ship (unless they are planning on changing careers). I see this as a fine way to lose some of the best and brightest really quickly.
Hell, every time our management talks about reductions or outsourcing my hand goes up. A nice package for leaving so I can coast for a couple weeks then look for a new job? Sure, sign me up!
(*) Actual socialism, of course, is worker control of the means of production, and has nothing to do with what Americans call "socialism" at all.
Actual socialism is workers having the illusion of having control of the means of production with the state having the actual control and screwing the workers whenever possible.
Actual capitalism is workers having the illusion of choice and freedom with the owners having the actual control and screwing the workers whenever possible.
lol witty one liners lol. Also capitalism failed at the beginning of C20, long before the Soviet experiment, but good luck trying to convince yourself otherwise while America continues creeping to the right and China's managed economy smoothly takes over.
I know, I know. I was just pointing to the ridiculousness of the situation where a millionaire is occupying a position just to get healthcare.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sharp wants to get rid of it’s employees voluntary, so the severance package has to be sweet. This is particularly true in Japan, where the chance of a older worker finding new, full time employment is slimmer than in other countries.
And it’s early retirement – which implies their pensions kick in. Maybe not at 100% - but it should be kicking out income for the rest of their lives.
Be quiet!!! I order you to BE QUIET!!!
But China is and authoritarian capitalist government nowadays, so capitalism has not failed at all. Actually it is the only economical system that works reasonably well.
What doesn't work is crony capitalism which is what US capitalism is becoming.
Some mod thought it is off topic. Getting overwhelming response for an early retirement scheme is nothing unusual. Only in the USA, because of the unnatural linking of healthcare to employment, we see such early retirement options as strange or newsworthy. May be I should have explained it better.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
China isn't anything of the sort. It carefully regulates its industry in the interests of the nation, and you're not going to get anywhere in business there if you don't grease the right palms. Its stock market is still a joke.
(of course, "authoritarian capitalism" is such a misnomer it's not even funny)
Actual capitalism is workers having the illusion of choice and freedom with the owners having the actual control and screwing the workers whenever possible.
I don't think that capitalism is about workers at all. They are a side issue in it. What was your point again?
Ezekiel 23:20
Marx and followers (not including Spencer) were unable to separate the concepts of ownership and control. Marx was so stupid he thought it impossible to control something you don't own. (eg driver can't steer a stolen car).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
That definition of conservatism is limited to the American conservatives; in Europe, where the term originated, conservatives were far from fans of capitalism, much less of laissez-fair, and supported a controlling state with strong ties to the dominant religion (Catholic Church here in Latin countries), like in the "God, Homeland and Family" motto that was used here in Portugal.
Dilbert RSS feed
Bzzt wrong. Stop saying that. China is a country achieving socialism by the capitalist road. Look up "capitalist roaders", you'll see that it's a heresy of socialism and Mao warned against it as it would destroy everything he worked for in exchange for temporary prosperity. Gosh, what happened after Mao died? The People's Revolution was hijacked by a bunch of jackasses. Sad.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
He died in 1883. If cars existed at all back then they would have been steam-powered monstrosities that would have required a crew of 17 and a great deal of experience to operate. It would have been all but impossible to steal one at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So Maggie Thatcher wasn't a Conservative?
Even by your standards that's dumb.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
God, Homeland and Family are indeed terms very popular among conservatives, be it in US, Europe or basically anywhere. These ideals need harsh and numerous laws to be maintained and therefore strong governments tending to the authoritarianism. The ideals of family and religion in specific have strong ties with private property even in Latin countries (as mine) and therefore with capitalism.
Achieving socialism by the capitalist road is like trying to quench a fire by pouring gasoline onto it, and any "People's Revolution" is always hijacked by jackasses, starting by those who first make it happen. Mao was a psychopath of the same kind of Stalin or Hitler.
Dutch auction IIRC. Also, more or less, how power pools auction load to generators.
Good luck patenting that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ernie the unpackageable
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=unpackageable&x=0&y=0
The founder is a smart dude. Keeping an eye on his investment.
Insurance is a separate issue. How does the CFO make his copay with a $1 salary? reach into his pocket? Does he have 'special' insurance? Can you get his coverage?
There are non-employer based health groups. IEEE after a year. Join anyhow, having a non-employer insurance group at hand is always an ace in your pocket.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh My!!
I have two Sharp TVs, both less than 3 years old.. Oh well, I shoulda bought a Zenith! ;-)
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Thanks darling, but I claim no such thing. Like many people, she didn't fit the labels cleanly, but she was still much more a New- or American-style Conservative than a traditional European conservative.
the thing that people do not recognise is that Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a nineteenth-century Liberal.
-- Milton Friedman
The kind of Conservatism which he and I...favoured would be best described as âliberalâ(TM), in the old-fashioned sense.
-- Keith Joseph
She was much more a New- or American-style Conservative than a traditional European conservative.
Dilbert RSS feed
Your right, Sony SHOULD have created the iPod. In fact, during the Samsung/Apple trial it became clear BOTH had been looking at work Sony was doing for inspiration. So... where did these Sony phones that inspired the iPhone end up?
Sony had done their own tech before the management take over but they did because they thought they had the superior system. Afterwards they did it for pure lockin reasons, like the mini-disc fiasco. It should have just supported MP3, I had one that I purely used with selfmade discs and it was damned good (still works) considering the alternatives (tapes, HD, CD and very small flash). But they didn't until it was way to late. Because management wanted to combine business interests instead of going for the best solution.
Sad.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8474611.stm
I hereby dub this "Ark B inversion syndrome"
The debate with Bush is a great example of the problem.
"Now, the difference in our plans is I want that 2,000 to go to you, and the vice president would like to be spending the 2,000 on your behalf."
And it is, of course, a completely accurate statement - Bush wants the $2,000 to go to the voter, because he knows that more of it will end up in the pockets of his campaign contributors. What it doesn't cover is the value for that money.
I'm mystified why the USA is not familiar in general with these numbers (it probably has something to do with media ownership). Here we go ( taken from 2006 WHO data) :
The USA spent $6,719 per capita on healthcare.
The UK spent $2,815 per capita.
The UK and the USA have roughly equivalent health outcomes. The UK has universal coverage, and no-one goes bankrupt because of medical expenses. The USA has 50M people uninsured who would have to choose between losing a finger and sending their kids to college.
Incidentally, Cuba spent $674 per capita, has (per capita) more doctors, more hospital beds, equivalent life expectancy and better cancer mortality rates. If the USA were really proper capitalists, they'd outsource all their healthcare to Cuba, who can apparently provide a quality product at around a tenth the cost.
Japanese companies exist firstly to provide employment and look after their workforce. Sounds strange I know. Because of that the workforce feels they are part of a family and it isn't uncommon for them to work unpaid when things get really bad.
I remember when the Nova language school chain collapsed. All the foreign teachers expected to be paid right up until the end, even though the most of the Japanese staff had not been receiving wages for a couple of months at that point. Similarly when Nissan was having problems and drafted in a European (Italian IIRC) to run things one of the first things he did was require employees to take all their holiday time off, because until then they had been reluctant to do so. It's a totally different culture.
Many of the Sharp employees offering to retire are probably just wanting to help the company out, and Sharp offers them a good deal because they are family and it wants to look after them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because "people" are wrong, and you and Milton Friedman own the truth, right? Please... You can use whoever warped definitions you may choose for words, but in the end that proves nothing. By the notation officially accept in political science, be it in US or Europe, she was a conservationist.
The problem is that in Cuba, being a doctor is one of the few professions where you both get respect, and, against the relative levels of poverty in Cuba, an acceptable standard of living. The problem is that Cuba does not allow doctors to emigrate out of the country. I sympathise with why they do this - if they spend the time and money training these people to get them a better lifestyle than the average Cuban then why should the state then let them use that additional income they gain in that profession to leave the country and go elsewhere?
If Cuba's doctors were allowed to emigrate away with the skills they have gained then Cuba would have to up the wages it pays doctors to not simply be better than the Cuban average wage, but to compete with international wage standards in order to convince them to stay. This would drastically increase the cost for Cuba.
I made a mistake, the last quote is actually Thatcher's, in the memorial lecture of Keith Joseph.
But I don't deny she was a conservative, I'm saying she was a New- or American-style conservative, not a traditional European conservative.
And 'conservationist' is someone who advocates conservation of natural resources. You mean 'conservative'.
Dilbert RSS feed
Early retirement is one way to cut the work force â" however, if done poorly it can lead to a brain drain. The more oversubscribed it is the more likely this will happen.
Only if they granted early retirement on a first-come, first-served basis. They may well have done it on a poorest-reviews, first-served basis. In fact, if you have less applicants than you were looking for, and you let them all go, that is far more likely to eliminate desired talent than even FIFO.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I fail to see why this is a problem from the POV of the USA - they have no problems with contracts that enforce similar arrangements, or enjoin the contracted party to never use the skills he gained working for one employer for the benefit of another.
In Cuba, you get your education from the state, giving you a skillset that you then employ for the benefit of the state. If they want to be able to practice medicine elsewhere for higher gains, they should make the investment and pay for their own training, like you do in America, right? (sounds like we agree on this)
Economically, it's a no-brainer ; the USA could send patients to be treated in Cuba as "medical tourists", pay 1/2 of the price they usually would, the Cubans would make a profit (because they would be getting 5x their costs) which they could funnel back into their country. The travel costs are probably negligible compared to most medical procedure bills.
The real problem from the POV of the USA would be having to admit that Cuba was doing something right. They would have to repeal their current embargo on trading with Cuba, which would make them look "soft on Communism". And they would be drawing attention to the mess they have made of their own healthcare industry.