Media firms keep pink slips coming

ANOTHER day, another 1 350 media jobs lost.
On Wednesday, Time Warner Cable announced it will eliminate 1 250 positions in the coming weeks amid slumping subscriber growth. Hours later, financial news provider Bloomberg said it would cut 100 TV and radio jobs in its first-ever layoffs.

Those were the latest in a series of recent cutbacks that have erased any doubt that media and entertainment firms are as vulnerable as any company in the US. The first weeks of 2009 have also brought pink slips at Time Warner’s Warner Bros. and AOL units, Clear Channel Communications and others. Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger said Tuesday that the entertainment powerhouse is also looking at ‘very significant’ cost cuts, including layoffs.’This is the longest and deepest recession in decades,’ said Hal Vogel, president of Vogel Capital Management. Last year, corporate America laid off the most employees since 2003, while the media sector eliminated workers at the highest rate since 2001. Media cuts for 2008 amounted to 28 083, the highest since 43 420 pink slips in 2001, when the Internet bubble burst.The US is also experiencing record downsizing in the retail sector pushing the number of planned job cuts announced in January to 241 749, the worst month since January 2002, when job cuts reached a record 248 475. In Canada, the country’s oldest company Hudson’s Bay Co. is cutting 1 000 jobs, or about five per cent of its full-time workforce, as part of a corporate restructuring.Cisco Systems Inc Chief Executive John Chambers said the network equipment maker may cut up to 2 000 jobs as economic weakness spreads.Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. announced 2 110 new job cuts on Friday as it scales back production amid a world economic slowdown.The world’s largest maker of mining and construction machinery said the layoffs at three Illinois plants – in Aurora, Decatur and East Peoria – and other cost-cutting measures were needed to maintain competitiveness.The latest announcement adds to 20 000 layoffs announced earlier last week.Panasonic, hard hit by the global recession, will cut 15,000 jobs by March 2010, the company announced Wednesday.Half of the job losses will come from plants in Japan, with the rest from international workforce reductions.Following are some companies which have announced layoffs since last week:AstraZeneca6 000Ford Motor Co.1 200Eastman Kodak Co.3 500 to 4 500Peugeot Citroen’s3 550 (in France)The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that as many as 51 million jobs worldwide could be lost this year, because of the global economic crisis.The UN agency says this would push up the world’s unemployed rate to 7,1 per cent by the end of 2009 compared with six per cent in 2008 and 5,7 in 2007.-Nampa-Reuters,AP, AFP