Election Triggers Layoffs

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Do elections have consequences? If you have been paying attention to the financial markets, you might think so. Wall Street has had two horrible days since President Obama won a second term.

However, stock prices are not the only thing taking a hit. It appears that the job market is also suffering. In the last 48 hours, the following major corporations have announced layoffs in America (links take you to news stories about the layoffs – with details from the companies):

• Energizer –

The St. Louis-based company said Thursday that it expects to shed about 1,500 employees. When finished, the restructuring should lead to $200 million in pretax yearly savings, Energizer said. It aims to have most of its restructuring steps finished by the end of September 2014.

• Exide Technologies –

Exide Technologies announced Thursday that it will be idling its lead-recycling operations in Laureldale and laying off 150 workers, effective no later than March 31.

• Westinghouse –

Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor responsible for shutting down Anniston’s chemical weapons incinerator, has reduced its workforce by another 50 employees.

• Research in Motion Limited –

Research in Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, laid off about 200 people at its U.S. headquarters in Irving on Wednesday, according to a source close to the company who did not want to be named.

• Lightyear Network Solutions –

More than one dozen employees at a Pikeville company lost their jobs this week. Officials with Lightyear Network Solutions said they are consolidating offices in Louisville and Pikeville to save money.

• Providence Journal –

The Providence Journal Co. laid off 23 full-time workers Wednesday as part of a cost-cutting effort, including 16 members of the Providence Newspaper Guild and 7 non-union employees.

• Hawker Beechcraft –

The company says 240 employees will lose their jobs with the closing of Hawker Beechcraft Services facilities in Little Rock, Ark.; Mesa, Ariz.; and San Antonio, Texas.

• Boeing (30% of their management staff) –

Boeing Co. said Wednesday it plans to employ 30% fewer executives at its Boeing Defense, Space & Security unit by the end of 2012 compared to 2010 levels.

• CVPH Medical Center –

CVPH Medical Center has handed pink slips to 17 employees. The layoffs — nine in management and eight hourly staffers — are part of an effort to “help bolster the hospital’s financial position in 2013 and beyond,” a press release said.

• US Cellular –

The move will result in 980 job cuts at U.S. Cellular, with 640 in the Chicago area, according to a spokeswoman. The cuts are slightly under 12 percent of the approximately 8,400 total employees U.S. Cellular had at the end of the third quarter.

• Momentive Performance Materials –

About 150 workers at Sistersville’s Momentive Performance Materials plant will be temporarily laid off later this month, officials said this week.

• Rocketdyne –

About 100 employees at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, most of whom work in the San Fernando Valley, were laid off Wednesday in response to dwindling government spending on space exploration, the company said. The layoffs were effective immediately, and 75 percent of them came at the facilities on Canoga and De Soto avenues, which employ about 1,100 people. The company has six sites across the Valley.

• Brake Parts –

The leader of an automotive parts plant in Lincoln County has told state officials that there are plans to lay off 75 workers starting in late December…The layoffs are expected to start Dec. 28 and continue in the first quarter of 2013

• Vestas Wind Systems –
Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS) is seeking to sell a stake of as much as 20 percent and said it’s reducing headcount by 3,000 to raise the staff cuts by the biggest wind turbine maker to almost a third over two years.

• Husqvarna –

Husqvarna AB (HUSQB), the world’s biggest maker of powered garden tools, plans to cut about 600 jobs in a move that will save 220 million kronor ($33 million) a year by 2014.

• Center for Hospice New York –

The Center for Hospice and Palliative Care plans to temporarily lay off as many as 40 employees next year as it embarks on a major renovation of the inpatient unit at its Cheektowaga campus.

• Bristol-Meyers –

Bristol-Myers Squibb is following up its lackluster third-quarter results with almost 480 layoffs. As Pharmalot reports, the company notified the New Jersey government that it would scale back in Plainsboro, which means the cuts will hit its sales operations.

• OCE North America –

Trumbull printer- and scanning-equipment provider Oce North America, Inc. will lay off 135 workers in three Connecticut communities, including East Hartford, according to its notice with the state Labor Department.

• Darden Restaurants –

The company, which was among those who had received an Obamacare waiver in the past, is looking to limit workers to 28 hours per week. A full time employee that is required to have health insurance (lest the employer pay a fine) works 30 hours per week, as defined by the Obamacare law.

• West Ridge Mine –

In its statement, UtahAmerican Energy blames the Obama administration for instituting policies that will close down “204 American coal-fired power plants by 2014″ and for drastically reducing the market for coal.

• United Blood Services Gulf –

United Blood Services Gulf South region, the non-profit blood service provider for much of south Louisiana and Mississippi, will lay off approximately 10 percent of its workforce. It was a hard decision to make according to Susan Begnaud, Regional Center Director for the Gulf South region.
A layoff is tough enough for employees to deal with, imagine hearing the crushing news that your office is shutting down just before Thanksgiving and Christmas… Here are some of the business closings that were announced in just the past two days:

Caterpillar Inc. will close its plant in Owatonna Minn.
Mount Pleasant’s Albrecht Sentry Foods
The Target store at Manassas Mall Va.
Millennium Academy in Wake Forest NC
Target Closing Kissimmee FL Location
The Andover Gift Shop in Andover MA
Grand Union Family Markets Closing Storrs Location CT
Movie Scene Milford Location NH
Update: TE Connectivity Closing Greensboro Plant – 620 Layoffs Expected
Gomer’s Fried Chicken in South Kansas City
Kmart in Homer Glen
Fresh Market on Pine Street in Burlington
AGC Glass North America to permanently close its Blue Ridge Plant in Kingsport Tenn.
The Target store at Platte and Academy in Colorado Springs
The Roses store on Reynold Road in Winston-Salem NC
Bost Harley-Davidson at 46th Avenue North and Delaware Ave. in West Nashville TN
Townsend Booksellers in Oakland
The Kmart store in Parkway Plaza off University Drive in Durham NC – 79 Jobs Lost

To see even more companies that announced layoffs since the election, visit the Daily Job Cuts page.

Source: The Blaze

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20 COMMENTS

  1. Did Wall Street anticipate a Romney victory, followed by a Congressional lame duck session wherein the Republican majority in the House would put the brakes on our collective ass before it veered over the looming fiscal cliff?

    Or did Wall Street anticipate another monumental bailout following a Romney victory? Or does the sell-off and lay-offs have more to do with Eurozone retractions that will stifle foreign investments, and shrink the opportunity for more off-shoring of jobs by Big Corp?

  2. Do you think some of these lay-off are due to a lack of business? I find it very hard to believe that all these lay-offs are due to Obama getting re-elected…. I think Obama’s re-election is being use as a poor excuse. The way I see it, at least there not moving production to China!!! If Romney was elected there wouldn’t even be a business here. They would all be moving to China!!!

  3. This all looks like planned layoffs in advance of the election. Lots of business was hanging on hoping for a Romney win. When Obama won they just executed heir plans. If they were doing well and looking forward to doing better this would not have happened. Look for talk of the government stepping in to stop such things in the coming weeks. If they do it is lights out for freedom in America. Obama will learn soon that he can’t make people participate in a system they do not believe in.

    • Given the fact that Evansville is in the middle of coal country and that all local electricity comes from coal election related layoffs are quite relevant locally. Refer to Murray and Freedom both of which are local and have had Obama Administration related layoffs. Papa Johns and Applebees are both local too.

      • Heard tell of two major companies, one inside the city limits and one outside, are hiring a substantial number of new employees in the next couple of months. I believe they both offer health benefits. Maybe they are just a bit ahead of the curve.

        You mentioned Darden restuarants. Well, anyone who knows anything about their Smokey Bones system wide downsizing and eventual demise will have a good story to tell regarding their near total disregard for their employess … as anything other than common serfs.

        • Good news. Hope it happens. So often hiring announcements do not work out as advertised.

      • Wasn’t Romney the candiate that call coal mines a killer? He even shut 1 coal mine down. Why don’t you just suck it up and take defeat… I’m starting to believe the CCO is an affiliate to FOX news.

        • Because sucking it up and pretending that 50.3% constitutes s mandate is abandoning the other 49.7% who voted for someone else. Denigration and name calling solves nothing dude. When businesses close or have layoffs because of the perceived will of the President it is news. There are good reasons that the country is a republic and not a democracy. Perhaps our President and our congress nerd a lesson in that.

          • Why keep talking about popular vote? How about the landslide in the electroal vote? Hech, Al Gore won the popular vote against Bush but still lost the election due to the electoral vote. Did winning the popular vote do anything for Gore?? No!!!

            • The short answer to your question is that THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE MATTERS.

              The popular vote in 2000 being in Gore’s favor let Bush know he had to compromise to govern. It mattered so much that he got permission from Congress before starting the Iraq war. The same is true of President Obama right now. Given the percentages if this was a vote of 401 people the President would have won by 201 – 200. That my friend is no landslide but would constitute a complete electoral wipeout. The electoral college is not and has never been a proportional measure of the will of the people. The election may be winner take all but it is the calls and letters to congressmen that will determine cooperation or not. I am betting those cards and letters will be closer to 201 – 200 on issues than the electoral tally was. The illusion of a mandate due to electoral totals is just an illusion.

        • I’m not ready to call them an affiliate yet, but of the reasons I like/ed reading CCO (reporting on local issues, willingness to report both sides of the story, and the generally high quality of discourse in the comments sections), we’re beginning to slide dangerously into increasingly cherry-picked “Obamney is bad, m’kay?” territory as far as featured stories.

          Regular readers get it. The CCO editor is, for a variety of reasons, extremely anti-Obama. I can generally overlook a bit of sway one way or another from my news sources, but my tolerance for overtly slanted reporting is limited.

          • Delta Bravo,
            You’re statement was gentle and on target. I too enjoy a variety of sources for news and opinions. However the CCO has been pushing the limit a little too far of late. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so all sides of an issue should be intelligently presented and welcomed. Articles which only place blame are useless. Lets lose the extremes and get back to local city/county or even state issues. Lord knows there are plenty of those to chew on.

          • We continue to work hard at being an advocate of good public policy and prefer to report on local things. Part of advocating for good is reporting on the bad. You can’t imagine how hard we look for good things to report on locally that have substance.

  5. Lesson number one: Elections have consequences. Time to man-up: The wrong guy won.

    Lesson number two: Obamacare has its consequences. Some full-time employees will become part-time employees, and some part-time employees will be dismissed. There is no free lunch, or healthcare, for that matter! Everyone in the United States with a decent IQ knew from day one of Obamacare that massive layoffs and dismissals would be inevitable.

    Lesson number three: Nobody forces anybody to read the CCO. If a reader doesn’t like what they read here go back to the socialist rag called the Courier and Press. Don’t waste your valuable time reading a publication you disagree with if it makes you so mad that you take out the editor. It’s his publication, not yours. And your life is too short.

    • “If a reader doesn’t like what they read here go back to the socialist rag called the Courier and Press.”

      An antagonistic, snippy response that would be truly at home in the Comments section of the ‘socialist rag’ you refer to, Dr. John.

      I presume (perhaps mistakenly) that the CCO editors appreciate legitimate feedback from their readers concerning the content of their publication. Accordingly, I will continue to give my opinion from time to time.

      Thanks for your feedback, though. It was fabulously enlightening…

  6. As Americans observe Veteran’s Day, I’d like to take a minute to remember why this day is Veteran’s Day…

    11/11 at 11:00am is the day and time that was agreed upon to end the Great War, aka “World War I”.

    In most countries around the world, people mark the anniversary with a full 2 minutes of silence at this time. Entire towns and countries come to a literal standstill in remembrance of those poor souls who served and died in the Great War, the most devastating the world has ever seen. I would never have known about this had I not married an Englishwoman who couldn’t believe that a country like the US – with all it’s love of the military – does nothing official to mark this event.

    Please join me and my family at 11:11 wherever you are and observe this 2 minute silence. Let’s spread the word about the true meaning of what we call “Veteran’s Day”.

    • Great reminder, Brad. Thanks to all who have served, and here’s a belated ‘happy birthday’ shout out to my fellow Marine Corps veterans. Semper Fi!

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