Carly is being bad again

Date: Sunday, November 28, 2004 3:16 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

November 28, 2004. No. 1148

Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard, is our modern version of Marie
Antoinette. Early this year when asked how she felt about the
destruction of American jobs from outsourcing she said, "There is no
job that is America's God-given right anymore."

More recently Fiorina signed the CompeteAmerica petition to Congress
that asked for an increase in the H-1B limit because supposedly HP
can't find enough Americans with college educations. See the petition
at:
http://competeamerica.org/hill/letter_congress/

While Carly is busy lobbying for more H-1Bs, HP is planning on firing
thousands of employees. If there is a shortage of skilled American
workers as she claims, you would think HP would hold onto everyone they
hired. Could it be that their HR department was stupid enough to hire
unskilled Americans that can't handle the jobs they were hired for? If
the answer is yes to that question, I hope that HP is firing their
entire HR department for incompetence.

HP said its planning assumptions include ``workforce
cuts across HP's businesses,'' but it was not more specific
about how many employees will lose their jobs or where those
layoffs might occur.

Despite these layoffs Carly claims that HP is going to continue hiring.
Perhaps she is planning on hiring some of the 20,000 extra H-1Bs per
year that Congress allowed in the omnibus spending bill. I assume her
version of ``cost structure improvements'' is to take away jobs that
God never gave to Americans and to give them to H-1Bs that will slave
away to improve her cost structure.

When asked by reporters last week if HP's accelerated
restructuring meant that the company would cut jobs,
HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina said the company would
still be hiring, amid "cost structure improvements."

Since when did God give Carly Fiorina the right to replace American
citizens with H-1Bs?

Carly's managing style at HP will fit right in with her political
ambitions. Rumor has it that Carly wants to join the Bush
administration as labor secretary. Many HP workers said that they voted
for Bush just to get rid of Carly. That may have been a big mistake
because she can do far more damage as labor secretary than she ever
could at HP.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/10257122.htm?1c

Posted on Tue, Nov. 23, 2004

HP plans layoffs over next six months

By Therese Poletti
Mercury News

Hewlett-Packard is planning layoffs over the next six months that will
cost about $200 million, or 4 cents a share, the Palo Alto company
disclosed Tuesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.

HP said its planning assumptions include ``workforce cuts across HP's
businesses,'' but it was not more specific about how many employees
will lose their jobs or where those layoffs might occur.

Company spokesman Bob Sherbin said that while HP plans job cuts as part
of routine reviews of its operations, the company's overall number of
employees is expected to grow.

``While there will be job losses, there will likely be a net gain in
the jobs here over the course of the year,'' Sherbin said.

Caris & Co. analyst Mark Stahlman said that it was not really possible
to estimate the number of workers that HP might be cutting, based on
its projected expense of $200 million.

``There is a variety of ways that people account for these things,''
Stahlman said. ``It's always different.'' He said the factors include
the kind of severance packages involved, what divisions of the company
are involved and how badly the company wants to get rid of people.

Last week, when the company released its better-than-expected fiscal
fourth quarter earnings, HP Chief Financial Officer Bob Wayman said the
company planned to accelerate a restructuring planned for fiscal 2006.
Wayman told analysts that most of the cost reductions planned would be
in the company's enterprise storage and systems business and its
services business.

When asked by reporters last week if HP's accelerated restructuring
meant that the company would cut jobs, HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina
said the company would still be hiring, amid ``cost structure
improvements.''

``As we accelerate cost structure improvements, and we take actions, we
are also going to be hiring people in certain locations,'' Fiorina
said.

Fiorina noted that during the fourth quarter, HP added 4,000 workers
and ended the year at 150,000 employees worldwide.

In its fiscal third quarter, which ended July 31, HP surprised Wall
Street with an unexpected revenue shortfall in its corporate storage
and servers group, called enterprise storage and servers, or ESS. In
the fourth quarter, HP returned to profitability in the enterprise
group, but some analysts still expect some of the job cuts to come from
this area.

``HP said it will accelerate cost reductions originally planned for
2006, which we think include head count cuts in ESS and in services,''
wrote Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich in a recent report to
clients.

Milunovich said HP needs to cut costs in enterprise servers to offset
an increasing percentage of sales of so-called industry standard
servers, which are lower cost servers designed around commodity chips
from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Contact Therese Poletti at tpoletti@mercurynews.com or at (415)
477-2510.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/11332598p-12247235c.html

Bob Shallit: Locals bullish on Roseville NEC chip plant after Japan
trip

By Bob Shallit -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, November 6, 2004
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up here.

After years of cutbacks, an expansion could finally be in the works at
NEC Electronics' chip production plant in Roseville.
A delegation of local officials has just returned from meetings at
NEC's headquarters in Japan. No promises were given. But the visitors
got every indication that growth is planned at the local facility
following six years of cutbacks that took employment from a peak of
2,200 in 1998 to 720 currently.

"We don't expect a decision for another 60 days but I feel confident

they'll expand," says Roseville City Manager W. Craig Robinson, a
member of the delegation that included other city officials, NEC's
local manager and Barbara Hayes of the Sacramento Area Commerce and
Trade Organization.
The local team pitched Roseville's low utility costs and its track
record in getting projects permitted. They also talked up the
advantages to NEC of expanding its lone North American facility to meet
growing demand for chips from Delphi Corp. and other auto parts
suppliers in the United States.

Meeting that demand will require "a rather significant investment" in
new fabrication equipment, Robinson says.

Roseville Mayor F.C. "Rocky" Rockholm, another member of the
delegation, cites this reason to be optimistic.

"We met with (NEC Electronics President) Kaoru Tosaka and he's coming
here in the spring," Rockholm says. Why's that significant? "He doesn't
go anywhere unless they're planning to build it up."

Name game: Downtown PR guy John Segale has been watching the contest we
started to name the chrome horse in front of midtown's new Safeway
store. He doesn't have a suggestion - not as long as the statue stays
where it is.
But move it to Corti Brothers market and he's got the perfect moniker:
the Italian Stallion.

Meanwhile, "legitimate" name suggestions keep coming in from others.
Among the latest batch: Chrome on the Range, Chrome Dome,
Metalmorphosis, Silver Steed and Mustang Sally. Another reader, Willa
Holmes of Pioneer, thinks the beast is so magnificent it should be
deemed a new species: Chromo Sapiens.

Triangle offensive: A couple of engineering companies are close to
signing leases to go into Riverview Plaza, a proposed office complex
that would be the first commercial project in West Sac's Triangle area.
Between them, the two firms are negotiating to take between 30,000 and
35,000 square feet of the building.

If either signs, sources say, construction of the four-story,
80,000-square-foot building could begin in the first quarter of 2005.
And finally launch development in the Triangle 11 years after city
officials approved plans to develop the 188-acre waterfront site
between Highway 275 and the Capital City Freeway.

The building is a first phase of a project backed by Ramco Enterprises,
architect Dean Unger, the Clark family and mixed-use developer
Sares-Regis. The project's second phase would be a 17-story building
with 300,000 square feet of space.

Voting against Carly: If the mood's upbeat at NEC, it's anxious at
Hewlett-Packard, right down the road.
Some insiders are forecasting more layoffs sometime around the first of
the year. Nobody's speculating on whether any of those cuts could be
here, where employment has dropped below 4,000.

But one HP veteran thinks CEO Carly Fiorina telegraphed local layoffs
when she appeared at a Metro Chamber event here in April and spoke
critically of the state's business climate. "She dropped some enormous
hints," he says.

There are rumors circulating as well about Fiorina. One has her joining
the Bush administration as labor secretary. That was a motivating
factor for some of Fiorina's critics inside HP to get out the vote on
Tuesday.

"A bunch of them were voting for Bush," one insider tells us, "just so
she'd be leaving the company."

About the writer:
Reach Bob Shallit at (916) 321-1049 or bshallit@sacbee.com. Back
columns: www.sacbee.com/shallit.

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