New Round Of Mass Layoffs In North America
Screams Of The Damned In Hell Recorded By Researchers
By Barry Grey
31 March 2012
The US electronics retail chain Best Buy on Thursday announced it would close 50 stores this year and lay off 400 corporate and support workers as part of a plan to cut $800 million in costs and restructure its business. The Minnesota-based firm was one of a series of American and Canadian companies that announced major layoffs this week.
Best Buy announced the downsizing and cost-cutting plan on the same day it reported a $1.7 billion loss for its fourth quarter, which ended March 3. The company, which has 1,450 locations nationwide and 2,900 globally, is seeking to avoid the fate of its former rival Circuit City, which went out of business in 2009, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs.
Best Buy’s announcement follows last month’s announcement by the retail giant Sears Holdings of plans to sell off 1,250 of its Sears and K-Mart stores in a bid to raise $770 million, following a $2.4 billion quarterly loss. Sears did not give an estimate of job losses, but the scale of the downsizing suggests the elimination of between 10,000 and 20,000 positions.
The crisis of these retail giants is indicative of the deepening impact of economic slump and mass unemployment three-and-a half years after the Wall Street crash of September 2008. It underscores the fragile and marginal character of the jobs “recovery” of which President Barack Obama has boasted over the past several months. Obama is seeking to boost his reelection chances by presenting himself as a job creator.
While the official jobless rate has declined from 9.1 percent to 8.3 percent since last September and US payrolls have, according to the Labor Department, netted a total increase of 774,000 jobs over the past three months, there are still 5 million fewer private-sector jobs than at the official start of the recession in December 2007.
Nearly 13 million Americans are without a job, long-term unemployment is at post-World War II highs, and the uptick in employment has been largely based on a nationwide campaign of wage- and benefit-cutting, spearheaded by the administration’s imposition of a 50 percent wage cut on all newly hired General Motors and Chrysler workers.
Recent data shows that real median household income in the US fell 2.3 percent in 2010, and US manufacturing labor costs per unit of output that year were 13 percent lower than a decade earlier. While poverty, hunger and homelessness are rapidly rising, corporate profits are setting new records and the financial elite is monopolizing a bigger share of the national wealth than ever before.
On Friday, another major retailer, Home Depot, said it would lay off 225 workers over the next 18 months at its customer support and distribution center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This followed an announcement last October of the layoff of 400 workers at the firm’s Baton Rouge call center.
Also on Friday, ATK Sporting Group, a maker of tactical gear and shooting supplies, said it would scale back operations and lay off 325 employees in Fenton, Missouri. The layoffs are to take effect within the next 60 to 90 days. Earlier in the week the company announced the permanent closure of a manufacturing facility in Onalaska, Wisconsin, eliminating 130 jobs.
Other companies announcing major layoffs this week include:
• Television shopping network QVC, which said it was laying off more than 600 employees at its call center in Chesapeake, Maryland. The first group of targeted workers will be phased out by June.
• American Ordnance, a producer of military explosives, which said it will lay off 500 workers at its arsenal in Milan, Tennessee beginning this month.
• Cincinnati-based Convergys Inc., a large business services firm, said it would close its call center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and cut 300 jobs.
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
We are about to be truely free.
Elites your time is at an end. We are awake, we are being helped and we will end this.
Those of you who follow the orders of the elite .. it’s time to change sides.
Or like them you will spend the rest of your lives making things right.
yeh, sure, there’s lots of “elites” perusing this website anon. i’m sure your threat in a “comment” section of an article regarding “best buy laying off its employees” is a real game changer.
The economy is improving but Best Buy needs to close stores and lay off employees.
It is way past time to turn off the corporate owned news media.
Dzung comment test
Unreported by national media are the closing of restaurent chains that have been in business for over 40 years. Last month the Casa Gallardo chain closed its last 4 stores in the St. Louis area laying off more than 200 people. Entire strip malls of shops and restaurents are closed and boarded up. It is NOT getting better as the alphabet Media reports, it is getting worse. Sears, K-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City and now an Arms Maker ATK, all victims of the Obama Economy.
What they fail to mention about a lot of the jobs they’re cutting is that the companies are going to take their operation overseas. Call centers to India, Philippines. The silicon wafer plant will go to several Asian nations, Etc, Etc. They do that so they can pay those people $200.00 USD a month with no retirement, long hours and minimal benefits. I think we should tax companies that move their operations overseas while still operating on American soil heavily! Maybe, just maybe they would bring some of the work back over here to the states. I spent two years in the Philippines and saw companies like American Express, BofA, Intel, Motorola, On semiconductor and others; which all are Headquartered here in the USA. One company mentioned here pays their employees $1.83 USD an hour. They do it because there are people lined up 5 miles long to take someone’s job if they don’t want to work for that wage. How’s that hope and change working for you???
What they fail to mention about a lot of the jobs they’re cutting is that the companies are going to take their operation overseas. Call centers to India, Philippines. The silicon wafer plant will go to several Asian nations, Etc, Etc. They do that so they can pay those people $200.00 USD a month with no retirement, long hours and minimal benefits. I think we should tax companies that move their operations overseas while still operating on American soil heavily! Maybe, just maybe they would bring some of the work back over here to the states. I spent two years in the Philippines and saw companies like American Express, BofA, Intel, Motorola, On semiconductor and others; which all are Headquartered here in the USA. One company mentioned here pays their employees $1.83 USD an hour. They do it because there are people lined up 5 miles long to take someone’s job if they don’t want to work for that wage. How’s that hope and change working for you???
Obama’s Globalist Masters have given up on the US as they steal it into chaos. They are stealing whats left of the wealth as they prepare a false flag, uprising and police state. The memory of freedom and liberty must be eradicated to fulfill their agenda of Global Domination. Obama’s job is the final Economic, Diplomatic and Constitutional destruction of America. The first two objectives are almost complete the last one is moving along. Look for a Libyan or Egyptian type “Arab Spring” revolt in US. The only difference is that you can replace the Salafi’s and Muslim brotherhood with Occupy, Union Activists and Terrorist cells that are crossing the Southern US Border. May God have mercy on our Souls.