Chrysler to cut 25 percent of salaried work force

[inanna]

Source: AP

DETROIT (AP) -- Chrysler LLC, whose owner has been in talks to sell the automaker to General Motors Corp., said Friday it will cut 25 percent of its salaried work force starting next month and warned that it will make more restructuring announcements soon.

CEO Robert Nardelli said the moves are being made as the company "works to find new ways to operate."

Chrysler, which has about 18,500 white-collar workers, said Friday it also will cut a quarter of its contract employees - those who work for other companies under contract with the automaker.

<snip>

In a statement, Nardelli said the auto industry is going through "truly unimaginable" times.


Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHRYSLER_CUTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-10-24-12-19-46

[Roland99]

1. umm... ouch.

:(

[customerserviceguy]

2. If there were a merger

we'd see these cuts, anyway. My company merged with it's smaller competitors, and my job ends this year. Good thing I found a 3/4 time job (that could go full time) to replace it.

[Blue_Tires]

3. horrible horrible times for detroit

[jayfish]

4. Yup, "Unimaginable".

+



= :shrug:

Jay

[llmart]

5. We haven't seen the worst of it yet.....

The fallout is going to be awful.

[doc03]

9. The steel company I work for cut production 30%

in the USA and Italy and 25% in Russia orders for steel dried up in September. All this stuff has a ripple effect for every job lost in the auto and steel industry 6 or 7 jobs are lost outside.

[MisterP]

6. ye gods, why did they hire vampire Nardelli? n/t

[tabasco]

7. The republican economic miracle

Thanks, republican voters.

Benjamin Franklin warned us there would come a time that criminals would get control of the government and convince stupid people that they were patriots.

[blue_onyx]

8. This is sad

Just seems like the bad news never stops. If Chrysler merges with GM, the job loses will be even worse. It's going to be a very bad couple of years, after the last 7 bad years.

[Posteritatis]

10. It looks like they're aiming the axe high?

The article says they're cutting 25% of their salaried staff and 25% of their contracted staff, but mentions a total of 5,000 people in a 49,000-person company. Am I misreading it (I'm genuinely clueless about their structure) when I interpret that as a blow aimed mainly at the management types rather than the bulk of the employees who are, I assume, wage rather than salary staff?

Lord knows I've heard of enough companies who don't touch the management and immediately start sacking the bulk of their worker base instead. ;P