you are assuming those 16,000 employees were doing nothing but sitting around their arse...if they weren't, these cuts will hurt Wcom and their competitiveness in the market -- meaning more revenue/customer loss.
You can't chop off 16,000 (on top of their cuts already done in the past year) and not have an adverse effect on their customers.
First, there is no question that WCOM is lean. But with any organization even ones that are considered very lean, there is always some fat.
Secondly, the 16k figure is the rumored number.......WCOM has yet to confirm it. We do know that 2.2k will lose their jobs when the wireless unit is sold but that is a major plus since the wireless unit is such a cash drain.
Thirdly, the article said "up to" 16k......the number could be quite a bit less. And we already know that of that rumored 16k, 2.2k are with the wireless unit, leaving less than 14k that might be cut from the WCOM core.
So the million dollar question as always is.....will these cuts be done judiciously & will it impact the top/bottom line today and tomorrow going forward.
That's why they say when you buy stocks, you are buying both the company and its management. Sidgmore is supposed to be the guy who can do the cuts judiciously. Lets hope he's earned his rep the hard way.
Besides, i imagine when the jobs start to go, the morale will continue to sink and the smart/quality employees may be exiting from Wcom not wanting to be caught short like the current KpnQwest employees.
When the "run" starts, negatives compound negatives and create it's own negative --- and it's very hard to reverse the process.
I have to believe the smart people have been leaving for most of the year......probably when the stock started going down. These job cuts may cause more negativity but if they do what they are supposed to do which is to bring stability to WCOM, then I would think that the "running" will stop.
ted |
