France keeps up pressure on Hewlett-Packard jobs
Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:26 AM ET OYONNAX, France, Sept 23 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin maintained pressure on Hewlett-Packard Co. on Friday, calling on the U.S. computer company to rethink its plan to cut 1,240 jobs in France.
The conservative government, under pressure to reduce unemployment from close to 10 percent, has scheduled a meeting with the firm's European head, Francesco Serafini, and referred its job-cut plans to the European Commission for review.
HP said in July it would axe about 10 percent of its work force to cut costs by $1.9 billion a year. The world's second-biggest computer maker has said a total of 2,500 jobs will go in Germany and Britain, in addition to the 1,240 in France.
The EU Commission has said it has no power to prevent HP dismissing workers. But France's conservative government has stepped up rhetoric over the case this week, making clear it is ready to put up a fight.
Labour Relations Minister Gerard Larcher is set to meet Serafini on Monday.
Villepin is trying to win back voters' confidence after they rejected the European Union's constitution in a referendum in May. Many French people said they voted "No" because of job concerns.
7 comments:
We Are All French :
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2005/commentary05092309.htm?logvisit=y&source=estmarhln001999&npu=y
Weither report: a hurrican cat 3 is blowing through Europe, the eye is near Paris sliding to Brussel...
It's probably rising to cat 4 or 5 if lay offs number is maintain.
HPQ stocks could be stable until Q4 falls. Take care.
seen in
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.invest.stocks/browse_frm/thread/092953e8efbf3c54/ec3412a957baddfc#ec3412a957baddfc
> The wisdom of laying off employees to improve the bottom line, aside,
> the thing that amazes me is that people somehow think a company OWES
> them a job. WHERE did this idea come from?
1) First it comes from HP management itself :
they keep repeating to their employees that they are the company's
primary asset
and that HP would do everything to educate them to adapt to new jobs
and technologies.
Well we see the results ...
2) Yes a company who is increasing its profits as HP is, thanks to the
labor
of its employees owes them something, but obviously this kind of
consideration
exceeds your understanding.
3) Now even on a pure "strategic" view ie to make more profits the
vision of
HP is short-sighted.
What is the strategy of Mark Hurd ? From the beginning everybody knew
that
he would do in HP. Is it really necessary to spend millions of dollars
to hire
someone who will merely do a subtraction.
This is the kind of job who could be offshored, Indians know how to do
subtractions also.
The analysts wanted a CEO for a better "execution". May be Mark Hurd
is simply wrong on the acception of "execution" taking it as "taking to
death" ?
When you are the CEO of a company at the origin of some of the most
brilliant
technologies in the IT industry like workstations (Apollo), Ethernet,
Vaxes, Alpha, Tru64, OpenVMS (Digital), Non-Stop Kernel (Tandem), hpux,
Itanium (HP) and many others your customers would prefer hearing you on
more interesting subjects than cost reductions.
We are waiting with impatience to hear conferences from Mark Hurd about
his vison about the future of Operating systems, how Itanium compares
to Alpha,
trends in storage technolgy and many others.
Hi,
I had meeting with a customer last week. Purposes were also for sales, wich is not under my responsibility, but I was present.
I felt my customer very very anxious. He asked us some questions about situation and blammed HP to give no informations to customers.
I don't know what think other customers ? Does someone have any experience last week ?
HP's strategy explained :
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.invest.stocks/browse_frm/thread/9a60281607af67cd/69b37a4c23ff0b4d#69b37a4c23ff0b4d
If you have any ideas or suggestions on how Hewlett-Packard can serve you better, please e-mail them to me by using the form below. If you need help, other information or wish to send an e-mail about particular HP products and services, please go to the Contact HP page.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/hurd/index.html
Although I cannot personally respond to your message due to the volume of messages I receive, suggestions and observations are often passed along to my colleagues throughout Hewlett-Packard. Your suggestions are important to HP, and the HP team frequently takes actions based on them. Please limit your use of this page to ideas and suggestions on how HP can better serve you and use the Contact HP page for other issues as they are not monitored on this page.
Thank you.
Mark Hurd
Chief Executive Officer and President (Designate)
Hewlett-Packard Company
Mr M Hurd, if you are not able to listen and read what people and customer say in Europe and specially in France, the world won't come to you... Your strategy is poor, sacrifying employees without customer and quality care. Just sale your stocks options and leverage stoks with the profit of the compagny and you ll surely be rich. You are like a single kid who just enjoy a new toy...the HP company. Shame on you, mr CEO, full of compassion with Rita and Katrina but killing your own employees.
Post a Comment