Tech & Biz

Layoffs Roundup: NEC, LA Times, Caterpillar, MOCA

by Jordan Yerman | January 31, 2009 at 10:31 am

314 views | 14 Recommendations | 4 comments

The LA Times is laying off 300 of its staff and merging its California section into its main News section beginning March 2.

"We're trying to get ahead of what we see as a very tough year ahead of us," Publisher Eddy Hartenstein said. "We're no different from any other company in any other sector that I know of."

Also in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) will be cutting one-fifth of its staff in order to keep its doors open.

The struggling Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced staff layoffs and budget cuts on Friday. The museum said it plans to reduce its staff by 20 percent and trim operating expenses to obtain an annual savings of about $4.4 million.

In the tech sector, Electronics giant NEC is laying off twenty thousand employees.

Part of the cost-cutting measures the company announced today included workforce reductions to its chip, component, and LCD divisions, which will total 20,000 employees. 60% of these layoffs will take place outside of Japan, and the majority of those cut will be full-time employees.

Small wonder, then, that 2008's tech layoffs were 75% more plentiful than the year before.

Last year, 186,955 jobs in the telecommunications, computer, and electronics sectors were slashed, according to the report by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
And the bulk of those cuts, nearly three-quarters, came during the last six months of the year, the report noted. That drove the tech sector to unemployment levels not seen since 2003, according to the report.

Also, heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar is cutting over two thousand more jobs, on top of the 20,000 announced last week.

Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. announced 2,110 new job cuts yesterday as it scales back production amid a world economic slowdown.

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pacomexico

at 16:01 on January 31st, 2009

I went out to take some photos and i found this in my way so i made the shoot.

pacomexico has contributed a photo to this story.

Paschen

at 16:46 on January 31st, 2009

Now that we seem to have entered the 1930s like crisis, lets hope we manage to avoid the 1936 rise to power of the Fascist. At lest we should be that smart not to repeat all of our mistakes leading to disaster and horror.

harringtola

at 22:02 on January 31st, 2009

I think that the world has a long dark road ahead to recovery and all the world leaders will need to come together to climb out of the hole we are all in. I believe that the change at the top in the United States will finally open a door to that being a reality.

grichka

at 04:41 on February 1st, 2009

In that area of the Minervois (south of France)
people make the "muscat" a spécial sweet wine
for the aperitive
the land is covered with white littkle stones
to plant the grapevine they have to plan the land
with this rented old Caterpillar machine.

grichka has contributed a photo to this story.