Well hai guise. Notice anything wrong with this headline?
"Nokia Oyj's new chief Stephen Elop put his imprint on the company on Thursday, cutting 1,800 jobs and delaying a key product after the world's largest handset maker reported stronger-than-expected profits."
This is an outrage. Nokia's shares have risen over 9%, to get to their highest level in more than 20 weeks. Average sale price for phones rose considerably, yet Nokia is cutting 3% of its staff, 1800 people. Nokia cites the layoffs as being a result of "part and component shortages"; yet, they have forecasted a profit margin of 10-12% in the December quarter.
Nokia should be doing something on their end to fix these shortages, and should not have to resort to laying off employees. This is purely a mistake on their end, and honest, hard-working people should not be penalized for the company's inability to operate effectively and efficiently.
These layoffs are unacceptable. Something must be done.
6 comments:
It would be naive for us to image that Nokia is a charity which hires people it doesn't need just so that they can increase their expenditures. Nokia is a BUSINESS NOT A CHARITY! If Nokia sees that it can maintain high profits with 3% less of its previous staff then obviously some workers were previously not pulling their weight. Nokia's actions were done without discrimination against workers. As the cliche goes, "It's nothing personal, just good business".
I completely agree with Tim. They shouldn't just give jobs if they're doing good but only if the jobs are NEEDED for the company to continue with their earnings. Also maybe they found that these 3% of the jobs didn't contribute to the profits.
Perhaps Cris is correct that those 1800 people didn't contribute much to the increase in profit. I think it's unlikely though.In a large company like Nokia whose shares have risen, it is quite bizarre that they would find a particular 1800 people who "may have" not contributed to the profit. Regardless, it still seems rather ironic, like Ryan mentions in his post, that Nokia would layoff workers when their company is doing well.
I don't understand why it would be assumed that high school students know more about running a business than a giant company does. If Nokia wants to fire people, they can fire people. It's a privilege.
We certainly do not know more about running a business and we are not claiming that. Most of us are probably just slightly confused why they would fire many people while their profits have risen. Yes, it's a privilege. I would like to read the article on this though because there are many instances where businesses are outsourcing just because they want to decrease their expenditures on employee paychecks. Could Nokia laying off people so they can make even more money even when their profit is bound to increase? I don't know. This article -
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Nokia-Announces-Layoffs-Restructuring-Despite-3Q-Profit-770134/
- implies that they are attempting to improve the company's efficiency. So Tim and Cris may be right. But a businesses motives aren't always so clear.
Now it's very unfortunate when companies lay off people; my dad was laid off, I know that. However, that does not put Nokia in the wrong. In hard times, cutting expenses is sometimes simply a necessity, and just because they are currently making a profit does not mean they are in the clear. There are more complications than are visible to us here in the audience.
But yes, it's very unfortunate; ideally everyone could have and keep the job they want, but this is not so.
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