Nearly Half Of MySpace Employees To Be Layoff

Once a social networking behemoth, News Corp.-owned MySpace's rapid descent up against competition like Facebook and Twitter may soon lead to mass layoffs.

The Wall Street Journal, itself operated by a division of News Corp., reported today that MySpace is preparing "a dramatic downsizing of its business." Someone familiar with the matter told WSJ that a third to a half of its 1,100 employees could be let go and another source said the layoffs could be officially announced as soon as this month.

Rumblings of MySpace layoffs were first reported by All Things Digital, also News Corp.-operated, on New Year's Eve, just days ago.

Home to more than 80 million visitors per month in the summer of 2007, its audience has dwindled to under 40 million visitors per month in the past year, according to Quantcast.

In an effort to stay relevant, MySpace has aggressively sought to rebrand itself as an entertainment hub and deepened its relationship with Facebook with a stronger integration between the sites last month. The MySpace logo was redesigned in October, when the site also underwent a significant redesign.

In an earnings call in October, Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey stated that MySpace's losses were not "acceptable or sustainable." Nearly the entire MySpace staff had off the last week of December in an apparent cost-cutting measure, which the company denied, stating it was "an employee perk."

Nokia planning to cut 1,800 jobs

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has said it is to cut 1,800 jobs.

It made the announcement as it reported a net profit of 529m euros ($741m; £471m) for the three months to September, after a loss of 559m euros a year ago.

Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the world, said it had sold 110 million handsets - 2% up from last year.

The company's new boss, Stephen Elop, said Nokia needed to review its place in the industry.

Mr Elop, formerly with Microsoft and the first non-Finn to lead the company, took charge last month,

He said the company was facing "a remarkably disruptive time" and needed to reassess its role.

Nokia warned its market share would shrink.

Sales of its smartphones, the fastest-growing section of the market, grew by 61% from a year ago to 26.5 million units, but the company is facing tough competition from Apple's iPhone and phones using Google's Android operating system.

WESTPAC jobs cut

WESTPAC will cut thousands of head office and administration jobs over the next two years as it attempts to reduce costs and streamline the way it does business in its first big overhaul since the $12.1 billion acquisition of St George Bank.

Westpac's chief executive, Gail Kelly, has also raised the prospect that back-office jobs could be sent offshore. The bank is considering whether to scrap its self-imposed freeze on outsourcing, in place since the merger.

It is understood that 105 back-office roles were cut at St George over the past week, including some call centre positions at the former head office in Kogarah.

The banking sector faces substantial pressure on revenues with credit growth expected to remain weak over the next year, particularly as the recovery in business lending appears to have been pushed out.

Although Westpac is promising to ''significantly'' reduce the number of staff working in administration and head-office roles, Mrs Kelly pledged to keep redundancies to a minimum by using normal attrition to bring down overall numbers.

Sources close the bank say that the number of job losses is likely to be in the ''low thousands'', with many of the cuts at middle-management levels, while staff in branches will be spared.

Westpac, which employs nearly 37,000 people across its entire business, usually has an annual staff turnover of between 4500 and 5000 but these positions are usually refilled.

Mrs Kelly declined yesterday to give a target for job losses, saying there were ''a number of moving pieces'' to consider - particularly as the bank is planning an overhaul of technology.

''There will be more people to come on in technology and projects as those ramp up during the course of next year,'' she told an investor briefing.

''But the number of people in head office and support areas are reducing. They're reducing now and they'll reduce more over the course of next year.''

A review of a freeze on outsourcing will take place over the next year, she said.

However the number of frontline customer assistance roles among branch staff will be ''strengthened''.

While Westpac pledged to keep job losses to a minimum at the time of its 2008 acquisition of St George, unions remain fearful the bank could eventually look at making deeper savings from the merger.

''An organisation that is making as much profit as Westpac is at the moment has got absolutely no right or excuse to say that they're going to be shedding jobs,'' the Finance Sector Union national secretary, Leon Carter, said.

''They've got an obligation to keep all of their people employed; where there is job losses their first obligation is to re-deploy those people to other positions.''

The bank plans to spend $2 billion over the next five years aimed at an overhaul of its ageing technology, including moving to a single system across the myriad of brands operated by bank.

In doing so Westpac has promised the upgrade will give it a better snapshot of customers and faster service while boosting the bank's offerings across mobile phone and other online channels.

Westpac, which still uses decades-old technology for day-to-day operations, is attempting to lift its entire banking system to the newer platform known as Hogan and which is currently used by both St George and its sister brand Bank SA.

Technology remains one of the biggest expenses for banks and given additional cost and risks in rolling out new platforms, many are reluctant to tinker with systems that work reliably.

GE Antwerp cut 1,200 jobs with closure of their Opel plant

General Motors Europe (GM) has said it will shut its Opel car assembly line in Antwerp, with the loss of 1,200 jobs.

The carmaker had intended to shut the Belgian factory earlier this year, then relented in the hope of finding a buyer by the end of September.

But the search for an investor has failed, and the plant will now close at the end of the year.

There have already been 1,400 job losses at the plant this year, and GM planned another 5,700 across Europe.

"The other job cuts are mostly at plants in Spain, the UK and Germany," an Opel spokesman told the BBC, adding that the cuts are nearly all implemented.

The Antwerp car plant, which was founded in 1924 and employed 7,000 at its peak, has become the first in Europe to fall victim to the global slump in demand since 2008.

Opel, which sells its cars under the Vauxhall badge in the UK, had set up a working group, including the Flemish regional government and factory worker representatives, in its failed attempt to find a buyer.

"Unfortunately, none of the potential investors was able to come forward with a sustainable business concept for the plant," said Opel in a statement.

The company said it is still open to outside buyers during the remaining months until closure at the end of this year, but is no longer actively searching.

The factory produced Astra convertible and estate cars for export outside Belgium.

Bouncing back
The factory closure and job cuts come just as GM Europe is about to recover from a sharp fall in sales.

Sales plummeted last year, partly because of a row with policy makers and trade unions over jobs in Europe, partly because of uncertainty about the Opel and Vauxhall brands' future, and partly because the global recession resulted in a sharp fall in car sales for the entire motor industry.

But now the situation is brighter, chief executive Nick Reilly told BBC News in an interview at the Paris motor show last Thursday.

"In every single market except Germany, our market share has increased this year," he said.

"We have all our agreements signed with our labour unions and we have funding in place so we are investing again.

"Before restructuring charges, we hope to make a profit next year, and certainly by 2012."

Kindl Klause pub offers free advice to long-term jobless

A Berlin pub has set up an advice desk to help the long-term unemployed get back on their feet. Many regulars to the "Kindl Klause" in Berlin's southern Neu-Koelln district live off Germany's minimum jobless benefit, known as Hartz IV, so offering free advice on how to find work again seemed logical, the bar's boss Michael Hasucha said.

"About 98 percent of my clients are regulars and every fourth person in Neu-Koelln is on Hartz IV...so it made sense," he said. "As far as I know there's no other one like it."

The point is not to get drunk, he added. "Most people seeking advice just have a coffee or a cola then go," he said.

The desk, which operates between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m on Fridays, is run by two social workers who once stopped off at the bar after work and got into conversation with locals.

Cuba to cut 500,000 government workers

Cuba says it will fire at least half a million state workers by mid-2011 and will free up private enterprise to help them find new work - radically remaking employment on the communist island.

The layoffs will start immediately and run through the first half of next year, according to an announcement Monday by the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation - the only labor union the government tolerates.

To soften the blow, it said the government would authorize simultaneous increases in job opportunities in the non-state sector, allowing more Cubans to become self-employed, to form cooperatives run by employees rather than government bureaucrats and to increase private control of state land and infrastructure through long-term leases.

Obama to announce $50 billion infrastructure job plan

President Barack Obama will announce on Monday a six-year plan to revamp the United States' road, railways and runways with a $50 billion up-front investment to jump-start job creation, the White House said.

The plan is one of several economic initiatives that Obama is due to unveil this week aimed at generating some desperately needed U.S. job growth and limiting predicted Democratic losses in November 2 congressional elections.

Struggling to persuade Americans that his economic policies are working, Obama will use appearances in Milwaukee and Cleveland this week to set the tone for the fall campaign.

The argument he will make on the trips and a rare White House news conference is this: Democratic policies have stopped the bleeding and produced some economic growth. Yes, more needs to be done, but Republicans would bring back ideas, he will argue, that propelled the country into the deepest recession in 70 years.

Obama is to make his case with a speech in Milwaukee to a labor rally on Monday, the Labor Day holiday that marks the informal start of the election campaign season.

The White House did not say how it proposed to pay for the infrastructure plan, but an official said one option under consideration was to close tax breaks for oil and gas companies.

The official said Obama was committed to working with Congress to fully pay for the plan.

Under the six-year plan, Obama is proposing to:

- Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads;

- Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail;

- Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway and modernize the air traffic control system and;

- Set up an infrastructure bank to leverage private, state and local capital to invest in projects.

The White House said the bank would end the existing system of spending on infrastructure projects that was based more on "geography and politics than demonstrated value."

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told NBC's "Today" show that the infrastructure overhaul would "put people back to work immediately."

Obama's visit to Cleveland on Wednesday promises to be more substantive. It is the same city where the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, recently urged the president to fire his economic team.

Administration officials said he will propose making permanent the business tax credits for research, which the White House projects will cost $100 billion over 10 years and would be paid for by ending some corporate tax breaks.

Other items that could also be talked about by Obama are a payroll tax holiday, extending tax cuts for the middle class and increasing money for clean energy.

STALLING RECOVERY?

The Obama administration is scrambling for solutions to a stubbornly high 9.6 percent unemployment rate and invigorate an economy whose recovery from the recession is in danger of stalling.

University of California economics professor Laura Tyson, a member of the president's economic advisory board, said targeted job policies such as a partial payroll tax holiday and permanent tax cuts for research and development should be priorities in the current environment.

"All of us here agree we need targeted policies for jobs and right now the deficit is not a major issue," Tyson told CBS's "Face the Nation" program on Sunday. "The major issue is a slow economy, lack of jobs ... we really need to get our priorities right and focus on targeted job creation."

The White House says patience will be required.

"It took years to create our economic problems, and it'll take more time than any of us would like to fully repair the damage," said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer. "There are no silver bullets and anyone who is promising them is not being straight with the American people."

Democrats are facing an angry electorate that could end their one-party rule in Washington. Many experts believe Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives on November 2 and perhaps even the Senate, which would make it harder for Obama to advance his domestic agenda on issues like climate legislation.