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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ftth who wrote (5182)	3/10/2002 7:18:14 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

I can't add much in the way of informed opinion w.r.t. the recent layoff by Verizon without more information, other than to state some views on "force adjustments," in a more generalized way. I never fully trust what I read when the issue revolves around headcount. In times past (starting with the late Eighties) there were "early out" retirements offered to fifty five year olds, and some to those who were younger if they met the minimum number of years in service. These were later followed by a series of layoffs, and many of those who refused to take the early out were laid off. Many of the middle level managers who fell into both of these categories found their way back into the ILECs (and some IXCs) offices within weeks, either as consultants or contracted workers. The only thing that changed for those who returned was their tax status, whereas they were W2 employees before, they then became 1099 contractors. Or, they went to work for an umbrella contractor as W2, and found themselves being rented back to the telco as a consultant. These shuffles were limited to staff assistants and other management types, but usually did not include union labor personnel for reasons that included union rules and other reasons. I'm not suggesting that this represents the majority of lay off situations. On the contrary, these represent only a small minority, but I'm using these examples to demonstrate what sometimes takes place behind the scenes. And very often the same dynamics are at work in outsourcing deals: Employees in enterprises often fear for their positions when they hear of an imminent outsourcing deal, but many of them are picked up by the outsourcer under new terms and conditions, and wind up holding down the same desks as they held before. Usually under much harsher and less career fulfilling terms, loosing vacation privileges and seniority privileges, I might add, and generally find themselves with a much reduced level of visibility into the future. But I digress. Where, what services, will the real layoffs affect? I don't know, except to state that there appear to be more disconnects taking place these days in the residential space than there are new connects. Likewise, with optical on the rise in the metro commercial sector (even if only SONETized to date), there is a lot less work for telco technicians to perform due to software-defined, electronic mapping and provisioning of services, as opposed to hard wire cross-connecting and PCB slide in provisioning that was earlier the norm. Automation, in short, continues to be responsible for increasing personnel displacements, to be sure. And then there are the body-count accounting games that take place, such as eliminating so many thousand new hire slots that were slated for next year (or that were never filled earlier this year), which will no longer be filled. I recall seeing that one played out in the past, as well. This actually is a legitimate metric, germane to budgeting forecasts, say, but to call it a layoff is folly, if not an outright sham designed to garner favor from Wall Street, or from regs (as I suspect we've seen here) just at the right point in time for maximum effect. See "shenanigans" in the upstream Schilit tute, for more information on this subject ;-) FAC