Kodak to Cut 3,700 by Years End

When I say Kodak do you think photos or do you think layoffs? If you worked for the company you may think layoffs first.  The company is getting ready to make some very big layoffs, which are set to impact more than 3,500 workers when the year is over.

The company recently put out an announcement about the layoffs that have come and the layoffs that are  to come before the year is out, “Kodak said that it is making progress in the complex operational restructuring necessary for the separation of its three businesses and the consolidation of its corporate structure. The company has reduced its workforce by approximately 2,700 employees worldwide since the beginning of 2012. Kodak expects to reduce its workforce by approximately an additional 1,000 employees by the end of 2012. The annualized savings generated by these headcount reductions, including compensation and benefits, is approximately $330 million. An analysis of further operational and workforce reductions is under way.”

As you can see when all is said and done the company will have shed and they have in the past, and will likely in the near future, trigger mass layoff actions. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The company began the cuts for this mass exodus earlier in the year, with some cuts coming in large waves and others in smaller clusters. For those of you who missed out on some of our earlier layoffs by the company here is an excerpt from that coverage that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “This time around the job cuts are set to impact 141 workers currently employed by the company. Because this amount of job cuts in one location is enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under federal guidelines the company recently filed a notice with the New York State Department of Labor. The notice, known as a WARN notice, does delay the timing of the layoffs for several weeks but will not build to stop them entirely. The layoffs will go into the effect on July 15th. While this may give us some of the workers enough time to get their resumes ready, and start putting in job applications, is unlikely that with this short of notice many of them will be a will to find alternate positions that will keep them off of the unemployment payroll.”

So as you can see things might get much worse for the workers at Kodak before they get any better at all.