General Electric to Layoff 75,000 Employees
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: Big story in the news today on business. Another day, another day of news of company layoffs. General Electric today responding to a story in "Business Week." It's saying this afternoon that large layoffs are expected among its companies over the next two years. In an article you can now see on the "Business Week" magazine Web site, reporter Pamela Moore writes that the corporate giant plans to layoff at least 75,000 employees, or about 15 percent of its workforce, in what would be the deepest cuts since Jack Welch took over the company in the 1980's. Joining us now on the telephone line is "Business Week" reporter Pamela Moore to tell us about this story. Pamela, Neutron Jack back at it again. Are these all layoffs that we have known something about it? Is this new? Did you just put up the numbers together and come up with this huge number? Seventy-five thousand is like a small city.</s>PAMELA MOORE, "BUSINESS WEEK" MAGAZINE: Hi, Joie. Yes, it's a large number and somewhat dramatic and as you know, there have been big numbers floating out there. What we've tried to do is provide a new level of analysis and detail, noting that the potential cuts from Honeywell may be much bigger than originally expected, 30,000 to 50,000 jobs. Some cuts as well from the slowdown in their economically sensitive businesses, but also as we have reported, it looks like after building a pretty big e-commerce infrastructure, now the company is seeking to rationalize those costs, cutting about 11,000 jobs this year due to their so-called digitization efforts.</s>CHEN: As we say, the numbers are so large. When you talk about 75,000, you can't help but look at that as being a big number. But does it represent a real change in GE's direction, do you think?</s>MOORE: This is a company that certainly has a history of cutting. You know, certainly we say Neutron Jack is back. But he has always been very proactive about making cuts. What's interesting about these efforts is that it does sort of hark back to the early 1980s when Mr. Welch in four years after taking the CEO, dismantled a lot of old-line businesses and cut 100,000 jobs in four years. In doing so, he sort of delayered or took out entire layers of jobs and I think that's what analysts expect him to do if that they can successfully migrate a lot of work support jobs to the web.</s>CHEN: And living up to his legacy as Neutron Jack, even as he goes for retirement. Pamela Moore, "Business Week" magazine, joining us on the telephone line. We thank her for that.