December Is Already A Bleak Month For Mass Layoffs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/10051

For those of you keeping track there have been more than 40,000 layoffs at America’s top 500 largest companies in the month of December. Jesse Russell reports:

Forbes has begun keeping track of the number of layoffs at America’s 500 largest public companies. The total for the month as of Monday, December 8? 40,662. That total includes Dow Chemicals Monday announcement of cutting its workforce by 11 percent or letting go of roughly 5,000 jobs. The company will also close 20 plants. Only into the month by eight days overall layoffs for the month of December are averaging a little more than 5,000 cuts a day. Also announcing major jobs cuts on Monday was Belgium owned InBev who recently absorbed Anheauser-Busch. The company plans to reduce its U.S. workforce by 6 percent or 1,400 jobs. Seventy-five percent of those jobs are expected to come from St. Louis. When InBev absorbed Anheuser-Busch earlier this month the company promised to keep the North American headquarters in St. Louis open and to not close any breweries. The St. Louis job cuts will come from salaried employees at the headquarters.