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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (282196)	3/29/2006 2:27:20 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 1572276

Re: It seems that Mr. de Villepin had the audacity to suggest that companies hiring workers under the age of 26 have the ability to fire those workers in the first two years of employment. Nonsense... Just-in-time people Aug 9th 2001 From The Economist print edition Adecco's John Bowmer manages the biggest, most flexible workforce in the world THE epitome of a temp is someone who every Monday morning has to ask the way to the loo. John Bowmer, the chubby British boss of Adecco, the world's biggest provider of temporary workers—some 700,000 of them on any one day—understands that. He works a bit like a temp himself. He lives in Redwood, California, where his wife can be close to their grandchildren. But he is almost constantly on the move. The multinational services company that he runs has its headquarters split between Lausanne and New York. From there it provides centralised facilities for the group's 5,000 offices in 58 countries. Mr Bowmer rarely spends two successive Mondays in the same place. Regular two-week trips to Europe involve stops in France, Adecco's biggest market; Switzerland, where the company is registered; and Britain, its third-biggest market (the second-biggest is the United States). While in Britain, he sees his elderly parents, who live in Derbyshire, the county where he was born. There are occasional visits to Grand Prix races to watch the Prost Acer Formula One team which Adecco sponsors. Then there are rapidly growing markets in Asia to keep an eye on. In Japan, for example, business is growing at 40% a year, fuelled by structural changes taking place as Japanese industry weans itself off its obsession with jobs for life. Companies there that need to be competitive are increasingly taking on temporary workers. Sony, for example, got a taste for temps from its experience in the United States. At a plant in California the only way to get a permanent job with the Japanese electronics company is first to have served for ten months as an Adecco temp. Although the business is known primarily as a provider of temporary workers, some 40% of Adecco's temps move on to permanent jobs with the same employer. At Apple's plant in Austin, Texas, more than half the full-time employees were formerly on Adecco's books. Mr Bowmer's first job with the group was running its British financial-services division, Jonathan Wren, a job he started just over a month before the stockmarket crash of October 1987. One of his first actions, he recalls, was laying off large numbers of the company's permanent employees, a painful experience and, until recently, one that few of today's managers had experienced, or could remember: the current slowdown is being managed by chief executives many of whom have never worked through difficult times. Then he was sent to Australia to run the Asia-Pacific region. When in 1992 the board saw that his operation was, as he puts it, sending home particularly handsome cheques, it picked him to run the whole outfit. In 1996, Adia, the Swiss company that Mr Bowmer headed, merged with Ecco, a French rival. Mr Bowmer (of a conveniently neutral nationality) was chosen as head of the new merged entity, imaginatively named Adecco. The group's growth since the merger has been spectacular. Its target has been to grow organically every year 50% faster than its market, and it has achieved this so far. In an industry that has often seen annual growth of 10% in recent years, that has required growth of a heady 15% a year. Revenues have risen from SFr6.4 billion ($5.2 billion) in 1996 to SFr26.6 billion last year, profits from SFr202m to SFr746m over the same period. For some years now, Mr Bowmer has pursued a Jack Welch-style strategy of being number one or two in his markets, or not being in them at all. Adecco is first or second in 11 large markets, including Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Mr Bowmer rattles off the positions from memory, evidence of a prodigious command of his organisation's statistics. [...] economist.com

To: longnshort who wrote (282196)	3/29/2006 2:53:08 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572276

Re: In France, you see, companies don't grow because it's too costly to hire while it's against the law to fire. Hence, since they rarely add jobs, French businesses under-perform, under-produce and under-employ. Think of it: It's awfully tough to increase output without a growing workforce to produce it. A ridiculous statement, to be sure. First, French companies --like their foreign counterparts-- grow through mergers with, and acquisitions of, competitors, not through hiring. Just ask steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal(). Second, it's never been against French law to fire workers. The problem is that the employer has to grant each and every fired worker a "golden parachute" of sorts, hence making mass layoffs a bit costly.... As for the claim that "it's awfully tough to increase output without a growing workforce to produce it", it completely misses the effect of automation and computerization of production. Nowadays, modern companies can churn out ever more products just by adding a few more robots and computers or merely by quickening the pace of the assembly line.() Gus () Mittal reveals Arcelor plan to France Finance minister says government would like to see more details about the project as Mittal works to gain European support. March 1, 2006: 9:01 AM EST PARIS (Reuters) - France said Wednesday it has received the outline of Mittal Steel's industrial project for European rival Arcelor, for which it has made a $23 billion bid. "We received a six-page fax of the executive summary yesterday," French Finance Minister Thierry Breton told reporters at a news briefing. Breton said the government hopes to receive more details of Mittal's industrial project in the days to come, and added it that it is too early to make a decision on what it has seen of Mittal's plan so far. Mittal founder Lakshmi Mittal is trying to persuade leading European governments to support his bid for Arcelor, which has hit a wall of opposition from the continent's political establishment. Mittal, the world's third-richest man, has offered a mix of cash and shares to buy out Arcelor, and on current prices his offer values Arcelor at about 19 billion ($22.7 billion). [...] money.cnn.com () Below capacity Commenting on the survey, Mark Wealleans, of Liverpool-based manufacturer Ley Rubber, said he thought prospects for the UK's manufacturers were "not looking great for the next 12 months". "Europe is in a much better position than we are and the states is in a much better position than we are, with lower interest rates for investment," he told BBC One's Breakfast. The regional trends results were taken from the 904 replies to the CBI's quarterly industrial trends survey received between 12 December and 8 January. Last week, CBI said 42,000 manufacturing jobs will go in the first three months of this year, slightly lower than the 45,000 lost in the final three months of 2001. It said 74% of UK factories were now working below capacity, their worst performance for 20 years.** news.bbc.co.uk