Free Republic

Travel Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The bubble will burst this year for travel companies outsourcing call centres to India, recruitment chiefs have predicted. Problems with language, customer service and call handling are forcing companies to think again about using cheap labour for activities such as sales calls. AA Appointments managing director John Tolmie said: "It makes sense to have back office and ticketing in India if you want low skills and the numbers, but the British public are put off by people trying to sell them something from overseas. You do not get the levels of service you expect....

General Motors Corp. announced in late November 2005 that it will close 9 of its United States auto manufacturing plants as well as three assembly-related plants which includes one location in Canada. Ford Motor Co. followed suit in early December 2005 announcing it is considering the shutdown of up to 8 of its U.S. manufacturing plants, including engine and assembly operations, with one in Mexico. Americans are well familiar with the downsizing, outsourcing and offshoring of the U.S. manufacturing base which has seen 2/3 of its jobs lost in the past 20 years, having been traded in for third world...

Sometimes The BRAC Process Gets It WrongDr. Daniel Goure, The Lexington Institute6/27/2005 Over the past 12 years there have been five Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) commissions leading to the elimination of some bases and other military facilities. The process for determining which facilities to close or realign is relatively straightforward. The Department of Defense (DoD) proposes a list of bases that is reviewed by an independent commission that passes the final set of names to Congress which must vote to accept or reject the list as a whole. In general, if a facility is on the Pentagon’s initial list...

Downsizing Fan and Fred The Monitor's View If the government-sponsored mortgage giants known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac knew what was good for them, they'd accept proposals to create a more muscular regulator over them and reduce their supersized $1.5 trillion portfolios. Those proposals were laid out in a bill introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Richard Baker (R), chairman of the House financial services subcommittee on capital markets. His measure rightly reflects a growing, post-Enron alarm in Congress over the risks a potential collapse of these two beasts poses to the nation's economy. Yet officials at Freddie Mac have...

Leaked Details Say BBC Will Cut 1,500 Extra Jobs - BBC Friday March 18, 10:36 AM EST LONDON (Dow Jones)--The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC.YY) is to cut about 1,500 jobs in news and other programs over three years, a source close to the situation said, the BBC reports on its Web site. Complex plans were approved by the corporation's governors and later director general Mark Thompson met the three broadcasting unions. In leaked details, a senior source said these cuts would be on top of those already planned. Unions have said they will fight the cuts. The BBC has declined...

WASHINGTON - Safe for a decade, military bases in the United States face an uncertain future. The Pentagon (news - web sites) plans to shut down or scale back some of the 425 facilities, the first such effort to save money in 10 years. The downsizing is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's long-term transformation of the Cold War-era military. The Pentagon chief argues that closing or consolidating stateside facilities could save $7 billion annually and that the money would be better spent improving fighting capabilities amid threats from terrorists. "The department continues to maintain more military bases and...

Speed and Power: Complements, Not Substitutes June 2004 By William R. Hawkins Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wants to radically restructure the U.S. military, particularly the Army, to put even more emphasis on the speed of strategic deployment. Under the so-called "10-30-30 plan," major forces must be capable of deploying to a distant theater in 10 days, defeating an enemy within 30 days and then be ready for redeployment to a new battle somewhere else within another 30 days. This is a much more ambitious goal than the previous standard of being able to deploy a corps-sized force of up...

Historic Holy Trinity Church in Boston’s South End -- where German Customs of decorated Christmas pine trees and Christmas cards were introduced into Puritan Boston in the early 19th century and became American traditions -- is among the 60 churches to be closed in a radical downsizing of parishes. On May 25th, Archbishop Sean O’Malley OFM Cap, announced the closing or consolidation of 65 churches, a decision he said he was forced to make due to the declining number of priests, declining memberships, and the overwhelming expense of repairing deteriorating structures. “Although this reconfiguration responds to the very special needs...

<p>Frances Bernadette Parker was 52 years old and had climbed through the ranks of Procter & Gamble Co.'s research operations. Then in the summer of 2002, she had a life-altering decision to make: Leave the company with a buyout package or keep working and end up with more responsibility but not more pay.</p>

My company laid off three people on my floor last week as part of a 3 percent domestic layoff of systems workers. The one that hit me the hardest was the competent, 50-year-old Vietnam veteran with decades of tenure just five years shy of getting medical retirement benefits. His son is currently serving in Iraq. We are told that this is the first of an unspecified amount (but rumored to be two-thirds) of offshoring of computer work. Offshoring replaces Americans with overseas workers earning three-fourths to five-sixths less. Estimates are that millions of upper-middle-class, educated American systems workers -- the...

Volume 34, Number 21 Thursday, April 17, 2003 Study predicts Boeing downsizingGeographers say airplane manufacturer will exit from passenger jet manufacturing By ELLEN GOLDBAUMContributing Editor The red ink flowing from the airline industry in recent months has consistently grabbed headlines, but during the next decade the U.S. economy will be affected by an even more significant loss with the nation's eventual exit from the building of passenger aircraft, a market the U.S. has led for more than half a century, according to a research paper by two UB geographers.The paper, which was published last month in the journal Futures,...

<p>Americans celebrate an uneasy Labor Day. More than 2.7 million jobs have been lost since 2001, the majority in well-paying fields, especially manufacturing.</p> <p>Months of "recovery" have failed to create many new jobs. Millions more Americans have stopped actively looking for work. Or they are underemployed, frustrated that their investment in college or technical training hasn't improved prospects.</p>

AUSTIN - The "Blue Screen of Death" -- that's what some state employees called the blank computer screen that served as the first notice that they were no longer state employees. "They were sitting there working at their computers, and then -- boom -- the network people locked them out," said Marcus Chase, a producer of educational videos who was one of about 150 Texas Education Agency employees to get a pink slip in recent weeks. "It was disrespectful how it went down." An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 state workers have lost their jobs or will lose them soon as...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Age may bring wisdom, but it also brings fewer promotions, less-challenging job assignments. Are older workers getting a fair shake? It depends on where you work, according to a new survey. Although the majority of companies said they offer the same opportunities to older and younger workers, 17 percent admitted providing older workers with fewer chances at promotion -- and 11 percent said they give older workers fewer challenging assignments. Those were the findings from a poll of 150 human-resource executives conducted recently by the Conference Board, a research organization in New...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Human Resources Staff Training For ‘Separation Process'; Precise Dates, Numbers Not Disclosed The new Pfizer Inc., which inherited about 60,000 employees this week with its takeover of the Pharmacia Corp., is making preparations to conduct “mass layoffs” in the coming months, according to internal documents. The documents, which were shown to human resources employees at a “Separation Process Training” on April 7, indicate that laid-off employees will be given a 13-week severance pay, bolstered by three weeks of severance pay for every year of employment. However, some employees, for security reasons, might...

Anyone else have their keywords and topics font shrink overnight? And the spaces have disappeared. I checked my font size, but I have to go to mongo to get readable keyword text.

ConocoPhillips will take about a $1.3 billion charge against fourth quarter earnings related to the sale of a "substantial" number of its company-owned service stations, the company said today. The Houston-based oil company, the product of a merger between Conoco and Phillips Petroleum, said it is still finalizing the amount of charges it would take against its earnings for the first full quarter of operations as a combined entity. The company did not disclose how many stations would be shed or how many employees would be affected by the sales. ConocoPhillips employs 58,000 people worldwide, 4,200 in Houston. Analysts indicated,...

800,000 Jobless Americans to Lose Aid 800,000 Jobless Americans Set to Lose Aid After Congress Ends Year Without Extending Benefits The Associated Press WASHINGTON Dec. 28 — Already facing a sputtering economy and slow hiring, nearly 800,000 unemployed Americans face a new woe Saturday when their federal unemployment benefits end. Democrats and labor unions, sensing political opportunity, are blaming the cuts on President Bush and Republicans in Congress. Bush, in a late show of support for an extension, urged Congress last week to get it done when lawmakers return to work next month. "Regrettably, the House Republican leadership turned their...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON (AP)--The Army is considering contracting out nearly 214,000 military and civilian support jobs to the private sector in an ambitious plan to free money to fight terrorism and comply with President Bush's desire to trim the federal government through outsourcing. Army Secretary Thomas E. White has directed his commanders to submit plans by Dec. 20 to privatize or outsource all functions not essential to fighting wars. If approved, the unprecedented government overhaul could begin this spring and affect two-thirds of the Army civilian work force. Military personnel would be reassigned....

JACKSONVILLE , Fla. -- Winn-Dixie Stores (NYSE: WIN - news) Inc. (WIN) plans to exit its operations in Texas and Oklahoma by June 26 , resulting in the elimination of about 5,300 jobs. Citing continuing losses and reduced market share, the food and drug retailer said Monday it intends to close or sell 71 stores in Texas , five stores in Oklahoma and a distribution center and dairy plant in Fort Worth , Texas . The company said Monday it is in final negotiations to sell a majority of the stores and the dairy facility to various buyers and will...