Monday January 26, 2009
Navivest

Most workers dread going in to work on Monday, but usually, its simply because it’s the start of the work week. Today however, there was good reason for that feeling of dread. The number of job cuts announced by corporate America, was staggering.

Caterpillar is cutting 20,000 positions, Brooks Automation, 350, General Motors, 2,000, Home Depot, 7,000, Philips, 6,000, Sprint Nextel, 8,000, Texas Instruments, 1,800 and another 1,600 employees have agreed to take early retirement or voluntary departures.

That’s a total of 46,750 jobs cuts announced just today alone. And of course, that just from the larger publicly traded companies that are followed by the press. It is almost a certainty that hundreds if not thousands of small company workers went in to work today and left unemployed.

We do recognize that if a business is experiencing falling sales and revenue, then layoffs are warranted, but we hope corporate America is humane about it. We say this, because the way Caterpillar worded their announcement was a bit troubling. In announcing the job cuts, Caterpillar’s statement was “We have initiated actions which will remove about 20,000 workers from our business.”

We understand the company’s is directing its statement towards Wall Street analysts, but the employees who are getting “removed” are also listening.

Tags: Job Cuts  Caterpillar  Brooks Automation  Pfizer General Motors