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HP IT

Another Round of HP Layoffs 515

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the severance-vs-salary dept.
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.
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Another Round of HP Layoffs More

Another Round of HP Layoffs

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  • Since local body is so interested in a company's staffing decision, couldn't HP threaten to lay off more employees unless it gets more tax relief?
    • Since when has local goverment had authority over whether HP keeps jobs there? The only 'unacceptable' thing is the stink that's being raised.

  • Put all right wing anti French stuff under here (Score:5, Funny)

    by EugeneK ( 50783 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:57PM (#13540986) Homepage Journal
    I'll spare folks a lot of work.

    "Oh, those evil French socialists! First they won't help us invade Iraq and now they are interfering with our right to lay off their lazy asses! I'm going to run down to McDonald's right now and loudly order some FREEDOM FRIES so if there's any French people eating there they will know how ANGRY I am!"
    • You empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
      Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

      Signed,

      Le Marteau
    • If the mayor is successful and forcibly prevents HP from laying off people, he'll be sending a strong message to other foreign corporations to avoid setting up an office in France.

  • French labor laws... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by huckda ( 398277 )
    are STUPID.
    HP will likely save as much in trimming those ~6k jobs as they did in getting rid of the 15k previous.

    • Re:French labor laws... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:02PM (#13541035) Homepage Journal
      They are incredibly stupid if you are an employer with more than (I think) 50 employees.

      As an employee on the other hand...

      While they may not admit it, France is very much a socialist country.
      • As an employee on the other hand...


        As an employee what? It's great until they get tired of carrying your unproductive ass and lay you off?

        -Peter
        • employees do well in france. even if their laid off, companies pay a large penalty to their UE insurance, plus corporations dont get to threaten health and survival, as the social safety net is much stronger than the US's, as they have socialized medicine, and good UE benefits.

          As a worker, I would love to have France's labor laws working for me.

          • Re:French labor laws... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by mfrank ( 649656 )
            You don't have to live in France to have France's labor laws work for you. I had a good job in Dallas working for Alcatel (French telecom company). They'd much rather hire people in the US than in France.

            Rumor has it that a few years ago Alcatel management in France was talking with the unions trying to avoid a strike. They ended up getting fined by the government because they spent more than 35 hours in a week negotiating.

      • Re:French labor laws... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dominion ( 3153 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:40PM (#13541383) Homepage
        While they may not admit it, France is very much a socialist country.

        You mean the workers own the means of production and distribution!?? That's amazing! I've been waiting to find a country like that.

        Or do you mean they just have strong labor laws?
    • RTFA. "The local consultation processes are still ongoing," Nachbar said. She confirmed that the 5,900 European layoffs are part of a plan announced in July to cut 14,500

      These cuts are are part of the 14.5k announced earlier.

  • I wish the mayor of Grenoble all the best. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @04:59PM (#13541004) Homepage Journal
    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.'"

    Good luck pal. HP is a big multinational and doing business in France with French employees is a royal pain in the butt (yes, I speak from experience, having spent 14 weeks at my company's French subsidiary last year).

  • Ten percent unemployment? (Score:3, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:00PM (#13541017) Homepage
    Jeepers... that seems high.

    On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be much reliable data available for most of the globe if this image [wikipedia.org] is any guide.
    • That's not too high for a European country. Germany has hit much higher without breaking a sweat. The thing about the US's 6 percent unemployment being considered HUGE is that we have a much more fluid economy with much fewer social safety nets than they do. Whether you think it's a positive or a negative thing, it is generally harder to become destitute or unemployed once you have a job in a European economy, or at least that was my impression. On the other hand doing business is more cumbersome in a more highly regulated economy. It's always a trade.

      I spoke to a Brit living in Germany for a while once, and he said, "Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all. What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?" I had to agree- I don't get much other than frustration that I'm paying for a useless political circus and its associated pork barrel projects.
      • I spoke to a Brit living in Germany for a while once, and he said, "Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all. What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?" I had to agree- I don't get much other than frustration that I'm paying for a useless political circus and its associated pork barrel projects.

        But it's apples and oranges. The tax rates in Germany (and Britain, for that matter) are much, much higher than in the US. There also tend to very high professiona

      • Re:Ten percent unemployment? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by EnderWiggnz ( 39214 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:27PM (#13541271)
        The other bit about EU unemployment rates, is thta they measure UE differently than the US. We generally report the U3 numbers, while they report the equivalent of our U6 numbers.

        Currently, the US U6 numbers are 8.9% [bls.gov]

        Suddenly, we look a lot more like Europe.

      • "Free" Healthcare (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:48PM (#13541451)
        Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all

        I've found that nothing in this life is truly free. A friend of mine has a mother that lives in Norway. She's on a 6-month waiting list for a necessary operation.

        Sure, she doesn't have to pay for it. She just has to suffer with traumatic pain while she waits her turn.

        "What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?" I had to agree

        Do you not use roads? Do you not use public transportation (which is subsidized by taxes)? Do you not use public water, public sewer, etc? Have you never called the police? I could go on forever. Your taxes are lower than the Europeans' taxes, and just because you don't get "free" healthcare doesn't mean you don't use governmental services. You use them every day.

        • I wrote a long rant. I've deleted it. Generally, it said something like this, "Our government is wasteful and incompetent, and since we've elected it we've made our own bed. This causes me dissatisfaction for I feel disenfranchised."
    • You think a ten percent rate is bad? Take a look at the unemployment rate in France for people under 25. It has been as high as 25% but seems to be somewhere around 20% currently (can't find 2004 numbers).

      • Take a look at the unemployment rate in France for people under 25. It has been as high as 25% but seems to be somewhere around 20% currently (can't find 2004 numbers).

        So what? That can be explained by taking a year off after college to bum around Europe/Asia. Wish I'd done it.

        • a) assumes everyone under the age of 25 is a college graduate (not true)

          b) assumes that between one and four and one in five students bum around for a year (which is unbelieveably large) that would explain up to their 23rd year.

          So, to explain it away you have to assume that a) every French(wo)man between the age of 18-22 is in college and b) every last one of them loaf off for a year afterwards. Sorry, that just doesn't fly.

    • Not so much unreliable.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      as wrongly captioned.

      Should be "Countries with unemployment lying between 5 and 10%" The UK for example would be around the 4% mark, I feel that Norway *might* be in a similar position. Hence their anomalous colouration.

      As for the rest, the former Soviet states are probably running under the old pretence of 100% employment and for the semi-industrialised Third World, the definition of employment is probably meaningless.

      Full employment is a conceit of the G8 and their wannabee hangers on.

      As for the article,

    • Unfortunately the gray means both "no data" AND "less than 5% unemployment".

      According to the original website [wikinerds.org], the data comes from the IMF [imf.org], which only has information for 29 countries available.

      So, for example, they have data on the UK (4.8%) and Japan (4.7%), but not China (except for Tiawan, if you count that as part of China, at 4.6%). But all of those are colored the same - both ones with no data and ones below 5%.

      So, yeah, there isn't a lot of data available, but there's more available than the

    • Re:Ten percent unemployment? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:28PM (#13541284) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • FWIW, I expect other countries cook their numbers, too. France might cook their "unemployment %" upwards, to justify a larger socialist government, just as the US cooks them down, to justify a "smaller" capitalist government (though we have grown our government larger, and faster, than anyone, especially under "capitalist" Republican governments).

  • To safeguard de company? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AnonymousYellowBelly ( 913452 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:01PM (#13541028)
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:08PM (#13541096)
      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!

      • Yeah, you're right, I'd much prefer the 10% unemployment in France and freakishly high taxes. Two months of vacation time a year with no money to spend while you're on it sounds nice too.

        Capitalism 101: If a company fires its best employees and buys Leer jets it will eventually go out of business.
        • Capitalism 101: If a company fires its best employees and buys Leer jets it will eventually go out of business.

          And the company managers who made these decisions are suffering in proportion to their responsibility, right?
          • No government in the world can protect you from all of the mean people out there. There is not, nor should there be a hurt feelings police squad to chastize jerks.

            It's your responsibility to save up enough money so that when someone does screw you over you're able to recover and move on. If you can't there's unemployment, welfare, charity, etc. etc. If an employer has truly breached a contract then you can sue them and win. It's called the justice system. If they haven't broken any contracts and hav
    • Interesting logic. Everything is imperfect so there is no sense rationally comparing anything. I have studied the French economic and political model and it's directly responsible for the unusually high unemployment("drawback") in France.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tabkey12 ( 851759 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:01PM (#13541029) Homepage
    I don't really see what companies like HP can do apart from streamline their business as much as possible, if they want to go down the same 'box-pushing' route as Dell. Even their printer business is being pushed hard by manufacturers such as Epson, who are willing to give up Linux and Mac compatibility just to lower prices even further.

  • Death Spiral (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:02PM (#13541037)
    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

  • Good... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mullen ( 14656 )
    As a person who was a contractor at HP, I am glad to see these HP employee's get laid off. Never in my life have I dealt with such a group of arrogant and hostile to contractors group of people in my whole life. It was a company of "we're better than you, you God Damn contractors". We ran just about every support division, but those fuckers never said thank you or even acted nice toward us. It was a company of Us vs Those Contractors. They were always busting our balls and threating to have us fired or laid

    • Re:Good... (Score:5, Funny)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:05PM (#13541067) Journal
      Never in my life have I dealt with such a group of arrogant and hostile to contractors group of people in my whole life.

      I think you need to learn how to express yourself. If you keep holding all of your anger inside, it will simply result in increased stress and maybe a potential heart attack. In the future, maybe you should just say how you really feel about a situation....

    • I never had a vacation because we did not have the same benefits as them but did the same work.
      How is that HP's fault? That sounds like the sweatshop contractor company screwing you over. Adecco, Manpower, etc... all have horrible policies like that to squeeze as many pennies as they can out of your contract. You just become a conduit to fill their pockets.
    • About ten years ago I got a contract 'temp' position at HP (Vancouver, WA, USA) to disassemble printers. My job was to open brand-new printers in packages and take them apart down to the metal chassis. The chassis was used to make prototypes for new models.

      There was no chance of my being hired, but I had to go to three interviews and take a drug test. And the 'job' was at the factory where the printers were assembled from the metal chassis in the first place. But there was no way that the

  • What a laugh riot (Score:4, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:04PM (#13541052)
    ...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"...

    Wow, even Jerry Lewis never said anything that funny...

  • I doubt they care much about the job loss and more about winning their next term.

    I know, I know, flamebait/offtopic/troll

  • Who's turn is it now? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:04PM (#13541055)
    In every company in trouble, everytime a change in the management happens, it seems to be customary for the new CEO/Chairman to layoff bunch of people.

    Ofcourse, you need to lay off a bunch of hardworking people who had nothing do with mismanagement which led to the company's present status.

    Why is it done? They have to come up with cash to pay the previous moron who drowned the company & also the overpriced present CEO & other management minions.

    Idiotic, you say? You've much to learn about business, silly!
  • If it's the employees who make a company great, how can you safeguard the company's future by firing them? How do you then achieve greatness?

    I think this is more about anorectic corporate theory (i.e. keep firing people to become leaner because you never no how grim the future might be! And shareholders like it, too!) than HP having too many employees. How sad.
    • The fact that good employees make a company great had nothing to do with how many there are. If simply having a higher headcount of "great employees" made the difference, then they could just sell all their other assets, borrow money, and hire a million new bodies. Except... if you don't have a big enough market for what you produce, or the industry landscape is changing, or the place where you do business is taxing and regulating you out of being competitive, then even if every employee is a rock star, you

  • Newsflash: HP execs quaking in boots with fear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:05PM (#13541062) Homepage Journal
    Oh no! The Socialist Deputy Mayor of a French city is making demands! What will we do now???

    Seriously, HP sucks, we all know HP sucks, and this is yet another round of cuts in the death spiral. That said, if it were, say, Chirac ranting about HP that would be one thing. The folks at the top in a country can make things pretty difficult for you if they want - it's generally good to keep them appeased at least to some degree. But who on earth cares what some obscure Deputy Mayor thinks about anything other than the Mayor's lunch order? Why does every minor insignificant politician have to weigh in on this crap? Do they really think that their constituents believe they have influence over giant multinational corporations?

    Even if this Destot fellow had some clout, HP's response would likely be "fine - how about we take all the jobs away, then... And move them to another country!"

    I actually mean this - I hate pointless layoffs (and was the victim of one at a previous company), but I hate grandstanding local political hacks even more.

  • A few errors in the story (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "to safeguard the future" of the company
    They misspelled executives, offshoring operations(aka jobstealing), and stockholders.

  • In other news.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jtheletter ( 686279 )
    HP executives will not be taking any paycuts or reductions (despite poor company performance) even though many of them make many times the annual salary of any of the people being laid off.

  • HP: The downward spiral (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rev.LoveJoy ( 136856 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:17PM (#13541191) Homepage Journal
    The HP of old days is gone.

    Gone is a quality product from a company which cares about making quality products. Gone is the HP that cared more about hiring good engineering people than about quarterly projections.

    Everone welcome in the HP that cares about shipping commodity product (read: crap) to customers whose success only matters in so much as they buy next season's overpriced plastic crap.

    Welcome in the HP which lies to long term corporate customer about product lines (not online: pick up Sept. 5th ComputerWorld and read Don Tennant's column and the reader reaction).

    Since the merger it's like HP sucked all the Suck out of Compaq's sucky products and injected it into HP products. Everyone thought the merger was a question of customer bases but clearly HP bought Compaq for the Suck alone.

    HP: now with extra suckiness!

    Me, what, rant? never,
    -- RLJ

    • Re:HP: The downward spiral (Score:5, Interesting)

      by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @08:16PM (#13542671) Journal
      When we were small and insignificant and had to hire the best people we could find, we had to train them and then hope they would work out. We wanted our people to share our goals of making a profit and a contribution. We in turn felt a responsibility to provide them with opportunity and job security to the best of our ability. Thus, we made an early and important decision: We did not want to be a "hire and fire"--a company that would seek large, short-term contracts, employ a great many people for the duration of the contract, and at its completion let those people go. This type of operation is often the quickest and most efficient way to get a big job accomplished. But Bill and I didn't want to operate that way. We wanted to be in business for the long haul, to have a company built around a stable and dedicated workforce.

      That's a quote from The HP Way by David Packard, a book given to every single employee of Hewlett-Packard, at least it was when I joined in '98. I wonder if the current CEO even read it.

      Since the merger it's like HP sucked all the Suck out of Compaq's sucky products and injected it into HP products.

      And it's not like it wasn't foreseeable. It's the reason that the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the William R. Hewlett Revocable Trust voted against the merger. It's the reason I voted against the merger.

  • Deputy Mayor: "Could we at least come in and have a look at the jobs?"
    HP exec: "No. Your father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I shall downsize you a second time."
  • We may gripe about having less job security in the US, but at least we don't have the unemployment rate that France does. Just imagine how lazy many Americans would be if they had the job security that their European counterparts have. Part of the problem with security is that it breeds complacency which keeps a country from taking the risks it needs to grow its economy.
    • Part of the problem with security is that it breeds complacency which keeps a country from taking the risks it needs to grow its economy.

      Why do we need to grow our economy? Is our entire economy a giant Ponzi scheme that will collapse if it stops growing? Does it have something to do with Americans' need to breed like rabbits? Maybe the French are perfectly fine with a non-growing economy. Maybe that's a better lifestyle than one in which we're running like rats in a wheel all of the time.
    • A bit less stress is good for your health too, you know.

      Why is it that after we've invented all these wonderful robots and computers and whatnot to supposedly make one's life easier we have to work and work and work harder and harder.

      Where does it end? What for?
  • That does it!! I'm boycotting HP from now on! My future PC purchases will be from Compaq! That will show them!

    I will also be boycotting Mercury in favor of Ford, Tru-Green in favor of Chemlawn, and finally I will only drink Budweizer! Busch will no longer get my business.

    If everyone would follow, corporate America would see who they are dealing with!

  • Re: 35 Hour Wimps (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SparafucileMan ( 544171 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @05:41PM (#13541399)
    For the Americans who complain of the french 35 hour work week, and use it to explain the demise of the french economy and a host of associated profanities, I'd like to point out that Americans only do about 35 hours of work a week anyway.

    Job surveys are pretty consistent: Americans waste at least an hour a day at work consciously fucking around on the internet, paying bills, etc.

    So. Really, 5 hours is not that much time. The bigger problem is that all of Europe has high unemployment. It's a trade-off: less employment, lower inflation, higher benefits for their old, their sick, their poor. You're telling me you wouldn't pass up a bit of job security for full and free health care? It's not like us americans have job security anyway.

    Besides, the ECB is committed to a wicked-low inflation target and that only means 1 thing: higher unemployment.

  • So why don't they sell a few GulfStreams? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plopez ( 54068 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @06:00PM (#13541575) Journal
    Face it, most US corporations treat employees and stockholders like serfs. Everything for upper management and to hell with everyone else. The sale of a couple of GulfStreams could keep thousands on the payroll.

    see
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11542 [theinquirer.net]

    And before people start yelling about Europe's high unemployment I would like to point out:

    1) US unemployment rates only count actively registered unemployed. Once the unemployment runs out most people don't bother showing up to register anymore. In Europe they have 'the dole' for which you get paid to show up and so they record larger numbers of unemployed. In the US the official numbers are skewed.

    2) Oh, and while on the dole you still get some minimum of health care.

    3) Oh, and there are 1.9 million US citizens in prison in the US who are not counted as unemployed. Contrast that to China with about 1.4 million in prison (see this pdf for an eye opener http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf [homeoffice.gov.uk] a report developed by the UK government no less!). Did I mention China has about 3 times the US populations AND is a Communist regiem?

    What they need to do is get rid of some overpriced C*Os and sell a couple of airplanes.

    I hope the French stick it to them.

    (no, no rant here, move along, nothing to see... )

  • Part of worldwide job cuts announced in July. (Score:4, Informative)

    by blueturffan ( 867705 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @06:08PM (#13541646)
    "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 [yahoo.com]clarifies that these 5900 European job cuts are part of the 14,500 worldwide job cuts announced in July.

  • Gee! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Master Bait ( 115103 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @07:36PM (#13542371) Homepage Journal
    Once HP's layoff are finally finished, then only the very best forard-looking, productive, gung-ho employees will remain.

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