LONDON - Marks and Spencer, the British retail chain selling clothing and food, is to cut around 7,000 jobs as the coronavirus pandemic keeps shoppers away from its stores, it announced Tuesday.
The job cuts, to be carried out over the next three months, include losses from its central support centre, in regional management and in its UK stores, M&S said in statement.
Agence France-Presse
PARIS - Media redundancies, partial layoffs and managerial wage cuts are on the rise as advertising markets implode, despite customers showing an ever stronger appetite for information on the coronavirus crisis.
FIRST PRESS VICTIMS
In Britain, The Guardian announced 180 redundancies in response to tumbling ad revenues, while The Economist magazine has said it is laying off 90 people.
US media have likewise not been immune to the market consequences of the crisis.
Conde Nast, publisher of the likes of Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker, has announced it is laying off 100 of its 6,000 staff.
Vox Media, home of The Verge and New York Magazine, has said 72 of its employees will be laid off or furloughed.
The New York Times has laid off 68 employees from its sales teams.
The McClatchy group, which publishes some 20 newspapers including the Miami Herald, was sold to an investment fund, Chatham, after going into receivership.
According to a New York Times analysis, the pandemic has seen 36,000 media workers either laid off, furloughed, or forced to take a wage cut in a sector that had already endured years of belt-tightening.
More than 50 local newsrooms across the United States, some of which had been operating for over a century, have been shuttered, according to a list updated by the Poynter site.
In France, the already fragile regional daily La Marseillaise was hit hard by the lockdown and placed in judicial liquidation.
Le Parisien is planning to cut 30 jobs and its regional editions.
Anticipating three years of losses, the sports daily L'Equipe reduced its employees' salaries and days off, after many of the world's sporting competitions sat idle for months.
WEB IN CRISIS
Online news portals are also struggling.
The Vice Media group is to fire 55 US-based and 100 foreign-based staff, according to a note sent by the group's CEO Nancy Dubac to employees, which was published by US media.
Beyond the problems caused by the coronavirus crisis, she also accused media tech platforms of "not just taking a larger slice of the pie, but almost the whole pie," threatening online news streams and thousands of journalists' jobs.
News and entertainment site Buzzfeed announced in March it was cutting salaries by between five and 25 percent and would also end coverage of news in Britain and Australia, having already left France.
For some media, the coronavirus crisis is a chance to speed up the transition to a more stable, subscription-based publishing model.
That is the case of financial news provider Quartz, whose Japanese owner Uzabase says it plans to cut some 40 percent of staff, mainly advertising posts.
NO ESCAPE FOR BROADCAST
Broadcasting has not escaped the crisis cull. In Britain, the BBC has announced it will cut 520 jobs out of a total of 6,000 employees, mainly in its regional programs.
Journalists will cover fewer stories and work in centralized teams instead of focusing on a particular program, the BBC news director said.
In the United States, NBC Universal has lopped 20 percent off top salaries, while the giant ViacomCBS plans to lay off 10 percent of its 35,000 employees, in television production as well as in its amusement parks, according to Bloomberg.
In France, BFMTV/RMC has announced plans to slash its use of freelancers and consultants.
Agence France-Presse
DUBAI - Emirates Airline said Sunday it would have to cut jobs after being forced to ground its fleet during the coronavirus crisis, but did not specify the extent of the layoffs.
The Dubai carrier, the largest in the Middle East, announced in March temporary cuts of between 25 percent and 50 percent in basic salaries for most employees after halting its operations.
It employs a workforce that is around 100,000-strong, with a fleet of 270 wide-bodied aircraft.
"We reviewed all possible scenarios in order to sustain our business operations, but we have come to the conclusion that we unfortunately have to say goodbye to a few of the wonderful people that worked with us," the airline said in a statement.
"We continuously are reassessing the situation and will have to adapt to this transitional period," it said.
"We do not view this lightly, and the company is doing everything possible to protect jobs wherever we can."
Emirates said on May 10 that it would take at least 18 months for travel demand to return to "a semblance of normality", even after reporting bumper pre-pandemic profits.
The carrier had suspended flights on March 22 before resuming some services two weeks later.
Last week, it began partial regular service to a number of mostly Western airports.
The International Air Transport Association forecast in April that air traffic in the Middle East and North Africa was set to tumble this year by more than a half.
IATA said that MENA airlines' revenues in 2020 will be slashed by $24.5 billion compared to last year, and warned the region's aviation shutdown threatened some 1.2 million jobs.
State-owned Kuwait Airways recently said it was laying off 1,500 expatriate employees, who make up a quarter of foreign staff.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the aviation industry, Emirates, which transported 56 million passengers last year, had slimmed its orders from both Airbus and Boeing, cutting tens of billions of dollars worth of aircraft.
The airline industry plays a key role in making Dubai a global hub for tourism and transport.
Dubai government said in April it would inject fresh capital into Emirates to help it cope with the impact of coronavirus.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — Iconic American department store chain Macy's will shutter 125 stores and slash 2,000 jobs over the next three years as part of a plan to shore up its financial position, the company announced Tuesday.
Like other retailers, Macy's has struggled with the decline of the once-dominant American shopping mall, as well as competition from online behemoth Amazon.
The department store said it expects the "Polaris" strategy to generate annual gross savings of approximately $1.5 billion once it is fully implemented by the end of 2022, with savings of approximately $600 million this year.
"We are confident in our Polaris strategy, and we have the resources required to return Macy's, Inc. to sustainable, profitable growth," Macy's CEO and chairman Jeff Gennette said in a statement.
"We will focus our resources on the healthy parts of our business, directly address the unhealthy parts of the business and explore new revenue streams."
The company will close approximately 125 of its "least productive" stores over the next three years, which account for $1.4 billion in annual sales. This includes 30 stores already in the process of closure, the statement said.
In addition, the New York office will become the company's sole corporate headquarters, and the chain will close its San Francisco and Cincinnati offices.
The plan calls for "streamlining its organization with a net reduction in its corporate and support function headcount of 9 percent, or approximately 2,000 positions," the company said.
The savings generated by the program will be invested in improving the digital business and "off-mall expansion," and new, smaller store formats, among other things.
The cost of the restructuring is expected to total approximately $450 million to $490 million, the majority of which will be recorded in 2019, the statement said.
Agence France-Presse
NEW YORK -- Ford plans to cut 7,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global salaried workforce, as part of a reorganization as it revamps its vehicle offerings, the company said Monday.
The downsizing will involve some layoffs and reassignments of white-collar staff and should be complete by the end of August, a Ford spokeswoman said. Ford has been phasing out most sedan models in the United States as more consumers have opted for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The move, which began last year and follows some job cuts announced earlier in other regions, will lead to 800 layoffs in North America in total, including about 500 this week, said Ford spokeswoman Marisa Bradley.
The company has yet to determine all of the specifics in other regions, she said.
The actions, expected to save about $600 million a year, come as Ford ramps up investment in electric cars and autonomous driving technology, eyeing future growth in those businesses even as current profitability is tied closely to sales of conventional vehicles in North America, including its best-selling F-150 pickup trucks.
Ford's downsizing also comes as car sales cool in key markets, including the United States and China.
"To succeed in our competitive industry, and position Ford to win in a fast-changing future, we must reduce bureaucracy, empower managers, speed decision making, focus on the most valuable work and cut costs," Chief Executive Jim Hackett said in an email to employees.
Ford had 199,000 employees, including its unionized workforce, at the end of 2018, down from 202,000 a year earlier, according to securities filings.
EARLIER MOVES
Ford in March announced it would eliminate more than 5,000 jobs in Germany. Bradley said Monday's figures included salaried staff in Germany affected by that move but that some of the figures in the German announcement related to hourly staff.
Ford also previously announced moves to exit the commercial heavy truck business in Brazil, restructure its Russia operations and cease production at two plants in that country while ending production at a plant in Bordeaux, France.
Ford had signaled it expected significant job cuts in April 2018 when it announced it would phase out several small models in North America.
"As we have said, Ford is undergoing an organizational redesign process helping us create a more dynamic, agile and empowered workforce, while becoming more fit as a business," Bradley said.
"We understand this is a challenging time for our team but these steps are necessary to position Ford for success today and yet preparing to thrive in the future."
General Motors has also undertaken job cuts over the last year for similar reasons, announcing plans to shutter seven plants worldwide, including five in North America.
The GM announcement drew heavy criticism from US and Canadian politicians, including US President Donald Trump. Earlier this month, GM said it was in talks to sell an Ohio plant to Workhorse, a Cincinnati-based company that focuses on producing electric delivery vehicles.
Shares of Ford ended down 0.1 percent at $10.28.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Apple Inc said on Wednesday it planned to lay off 190 employees in its self-driving car program, Project Titan, changes that provide a rare window into the automotive technologies the company has been pursuing.
The tech firm said in a filing with state regulators that it planned to lay off people from 8 different Santa Clara County facilities near its Cupertino, California, headquarters, as of April 16. A company spokesman confirmed that the reduction was from the self-driving car program.
While the iPhone maker has acknowledged its interest in self-driving cars in broad terms, it has never detailed precisely which technologies it is working on and whether it seeks to build a whole vehicle or the sensors, computer system and software to control one.
The public documents filed with regulators provide some previously undisclosed clues.
Among those laid off were at least two dozen software engineers, including a machine learning engineer, and 40 hardware engineers, according to a letter sent by Apple to California employment regulators earlier this month.
Some of the positions hint at physical products for consumers: three product design engineers and an ergonomics engineer face layoffs. A machine shop supervisor was among the reductions, though it is unclear how many machinists reported to the supervisor and whether the shop fabricates automotive parts or smaller parts for electronics and sensors.
The layoffs appear to be the first major shake-up of Project Titan under Doug Field, who returned to Apple last year as Vice President of Special Projects after a stint at electric car maker Tesla Inc.
Apple operates the car project on a "need-to-know" basis, with only about 5,000 of Apple's 140,000 full-time workers included, according to court documents in a theft of trade secrets criminal case filed this year against an ex-Apple employee.
About 1,200 of those are "core" employees that are "directly working on the development of the project," according to the complaint, which was unsealed in January.
Despite the headcount changes, the company appears to have ramped up its testing on California roads. In a filing with regulators earlier this month, Apple said it had logged nearly 80,000 miles of testing in its home state in 2018, far surpassing the less than 1,000 miles it had logged the year before.
It was, however, far fewer than Alphabet Inc's Waymo unit, which logged 1.2 million miles in California last year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
TAIPEI -- Taiwan's struggling smartphone maker HTC announced Tuesday it would slash 1,500 jobs, around a fifth of its total workforce, in the biggest staff cull for 3 years following heavy losses.
Once a star of the intensely competitive smartphone sector, HTC has been struggling in the face of stiff competition from Apple and Samsung as well as strong Chinese brands such as Huawei.
The announcement of the cuts to its manufacturing workforce comes despite a new deal with Google, completed in January, which boosted HTC's first quarter performance after a dismal 2017.
It incurred a net loss of Tw$16.91 billion in 2017 and a loss per share of Tw$20.58, the highest since it listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in March 2002.
Losses of Tw$9.8 billion in the last three months of 2017 represented its worst ever quarterly results.
HTC described the cuts -- which will be implemented by the end of September -- as "a decisive step in the realignment of resources across the organization" that would allow "more flexible operations management".
Shares in the firm plunged 6.71 percent to Tw$52.80 in Taipei and are sharply down from a high of Tw$1,300 in 2011 as its share of the global smartphone market has been worn away.
Under the $1.1 billion deal with Google, the US tech giant took on half of HTC's research and development staff -- about 2,000 people.
Many of them had already been working on its Pixel handset, manufactured by HTC, as well as acquiring intellectual property licensing.
The deal reflected Google's wish to emulate the success of Apple iPhones by controlling the hardware as well as the software used in the premium-priced handsets.
Following the Google deal, HTC announced its first quarterly gains for almost 3 years in May, posting a net profit of Tw$21.1 billion.
But while analysts said the Google agreement would mean some immediate benefits for HTC, such as more capital and cost reductions, they predicted a turnaround in its fortunes was unlikely.
In 2015, the company cut more than 2,000 jobs, slashing its workforce by 15 percent after posting its then biggest ever quarterly loss of Tw$8.0 billion.
HTC has previously said it wants to better coordinate its smartphone and virtual reality businesses.
The company is among major tech firms including Facebook and Samsung to venture into virtual reality and released its first VR headset Vive in 2016.
However, analysts have been skeptical about the earning potential of its investments in virtual reality and other emerging areas.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LONDON - Toys"R"Us is to shut a quarter of its British stores, with a loss of up to 800 staff, the troubled US retailer's UK arm announced on Monday.
The US company, which recently filed for bankruptcy in its home market as it struggles to compete with the likes of Amazon, said its larger UK stores no longer made economic sense and that the future lay with smaller outlets.
"Like many UK retailers in today's market environment, we need to transform our business so that we have a platform that can better meet customers' evolving needs," said Steve Knights, managing director of Toys"R"Us UK.
"Our newer, smaller, more interactive stores are in the right shopping locations and are trading well, while our new website has generated significant growth in online and click-and-collect sales."
Knights added that the group's warehouse-style stores opened in the 1980s and 1990s had become too expensive to operate.
The group will shut at least 26 stores, beginning early next year. A source told AFP that between 500 and 800 staff from a total of 3,200 could lose their jobs.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
