3M cuts jobs while Honda tries not to
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Renita Jablonski: Honda just announced some tough moves for its plants in North America. The company says it’s looking at a round of pay cuts and buy-outs. Meanwhile 3M, the largest manufacturing company in Minnesota, says it’s facing more lay-offs. Marketplace’s Jeremy Hobson has this jobs round-up from New York.
Jeremy Hobson: 3M is cutting 1,200 jobs, or about 1.5 percent of its workforce. Several hundred of those layoffs will take place at the company’s headquarters in Minnesota.
3M CEO George Buckley spoke with Minnesota Public Radio yesterday. He said he’s hopeful the company is coming to an end of the layoff cycle:
George Buckley: And what you don’t want to do is to have to, having cut too hard or too deep, that you don’t then have the skill sets and the people in place to respond to the economy when it comes out of recession, and it will come out of recession.
It doesn’t look like that’ll happen in the near term if you watch what Honda is doing. It says it’ll cut output this summer by 62,000 vehicles.
Honda’s trying to avoid layoffs by offering buyouts and sweetening retirement packages.
In the next hour, we’ll get a better sense of the nationwide picture when a private forecaster releases a report on planned job cuts. That’s expected to show a decrease in layoffs for the second straight month.
In New York, I’m Jeremy Hobson for Marketplace.
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