Layoffs

PNC Financial Services Group's layoffs in Maryland resulting from its acquisition of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. will hit Linthicum, Baltimore City and Frederick the hardest, according to notices the company filed with the state labor department. PNC notified nearly 900 Mercantile employees in Maryland and surrounding states that their positions are being eliminated. Company officials have declined to say exactly how many employees will lose their jobs because some employees might leave on their own and others might move to other positions.

General Motors Corp. said yesterday that it will keep its 64-year-old Baltimore van-assembly plant open through the fall of 2003 but will reduce the plant's work force.The news was another in a series of promises to keep the plant open. In July 1998, GM said it would keep the plant on Broening Highway operating through 2000. In June, the company extended that to 2001. Every announcement, including yesterday's, has come with the warning that the long-term future of the plant is up in the air.Because GM studies show that demand for Chevy Astros and GMC Safaris is likely to wane, officials plan to go from two shifts to one beginning next summer.

The St. Paul Cos. Inc. announced yesterday that it will lay off 1,000 employees by the end of the year, a move that could carve still deeper into staffing at the former USF&G offices that it acquired last year.Company officials said the layoffs -- more than 7 percent of its nationwide work force -- are designed to reduce costs by $100 million a year, as the Minnesota-based insurance company fights declining rates and heightened competition.Chief Executive Officer Douglas W. Leatherdale said workers will be cut throughout the company, and that he had not determined how many of the 1,700 employees in Baltimore might lose their jobs.

One month after Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. officials said there were no plans to reduce its work force as a result of deregulation, the utility said yesterday that it is considering cutting between 250 and 350 jobs next year.In addition, BGE said it will draft a three-year plan to help it project further possible job losses in 2001 and 2002 as it anticipates frozen electric rates, new competition and higher expenses.While the company estimates 6 percent to 9 percent of its work force of 3,900 in its utility operations group could be cut next year, "any numbers are uncertain as we're just beginning the process," said Frank O. Heintz, BGE executive vice president for the group.

The Baltimore Police Department has issued pink slips to 62 retired officers who were rehired during the past three years as part of an effort to free desk-bound officers for street patrol.Though city police received a $5 million budget boost June 10, department officials said it was not enough to avoid layoffs. City police are working with a $199 million budget for fiscal 2000 beginning July 1, a 2.6 percent increase from this year.Department officials said commanders do not know whether the layoffs, which take effect July 1, will force officers off the street to fill the vacancies.

The first wave of layoffs has hit the city's Department of Parks and Recreation, where 52 workers ranging from janitors to administrators were given two weeks' notice Friday.The layoffs are the first in the city's plans to eliminate 575 positions to break even in next year's $1.8 billion budget. About 260 of the positions have been eliminated through retirements or voluntary departures, city budget officials said. But that leaves 315 more slots that need to be cut before the city budget is adopted by July 1.Baltimore faces $153 million in budget deficits over the next four years.

The Chicago Tribune said in an editorial Saturday:THE astonishing American job machine -- the economic equivalent of the meteorological El Nino -- continues to confound. By all rights, the U.S. economy shouldn't have created more than a quarter of a million jobs in November, any more than we should have experienced record high temperatures in December. But it did.Industrial declineThe Asian financial crisis and its double whammy of cheaper imports and evaporating export markets certainly has taken its toll on the manufacturing sector.

Corporate downsizing has hit its fastest pace in five years, according to one widely watched measure, but the economy has proved so adept at absorbing displaced workers that economists say the layoffs pose relatively little threat to continued national growth."

Season's Greetings, you're fired.There is no wonderful time for a company to declare it's cutting jobs, but December announcements may be the worst. There's nothing like a pink slip to ruin someone's holiday festivities, and there's nothing like being compared to the Grinch who stole Christmas to make a business look bad."If a company is saying it's going to make the announcement on Dec. 18, we say couldn't they wait two weeks and do it on the second of January?" said Ann Wolfe, managing consultant at the outplacement firm Drake Beam Morin in Towson.

Employees at Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Division, just 16 months removed from working for Westinghouse Electronic Systems, are apprehensive about the prospect of getting their paychecks from yet another company -- Lockheed Martin Corp."

WASHINGTON -The wave of layoffs that pushed unemployment to its highest level in more than a quarter-century last month confronted American workers with the worst job market many have faced in their lives - and gave worried consumers a new jolt of anxiety. Capping a week of breath-taking stock market plunges, new fears for the survival of the biggest U.S. automaker and fresh concern over the banking system, the government's report yesterday that unemployment climbed to 8.1 percent in February was only the latest sign that the economic crisis is getting worse.

Steve Steurer framed both letters and hung them on his office wall as a "reality check." The first one, signed on Oct. 2, 1991, by the Maryland schools superintendent - then as now, Nancy S. Grasmick - regretfully informed him that he was being let go. Steurer was one of the 1,766 state employees who were targeted for layoffs as a recession - then as now - plunged the state budget into deficit. But it is perhaps the second letter, dated Oct. 23, 1991, that is particularly instructive, as seemingly every day, both the public and private sectors unload more and more employees.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is planning to lay off hundreds of state workers and is asking for other labor concessions to help close a nearly $2 billion budget gap projected for the fiscal year that begins in July. That warning came hours before the Maryland General Assembly convened yesterday with ceremonial speeches pledging "One Maryland" unity. But signs of discord soon surfaced between the Democratic governor and lawmakers, who must ratify the budget, revealing tensions aggravated by economic woes that are sure to grow as the 90-day session unfolds.

In normal times, self-interest keeps society working and increases the wealth of nations. Corporations earn profits but also supply needed products. Consumers furnish their nests but also create jobs. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest," wrote Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, who figured this out two centuries ago. These are not normal times. As shoppers threaten to go on strike, as bankers shrink from lending, as investors flee the markets, behavior that makes sense for one family or one company is proving poisonous for us all. This includes you, employers.

It's hard to say goodbye to colleagues. Especially under stressful circumstances such as layoffs that are becoming more frequent in the slumping economy. While the focus is on the plight of unemployed friends and co-workers - and rightly so - there's another group that is also suffering: the so-called survivors who are left to deal with guilt, sadness and other whirling emotions. "There are feelings of guilt," says Benjamin Dattner, a management consultant and adjunct professor in the industrial and organizational psychology master's program at New York University.

When I joined The Sun 21 years ago, there was still at least one person in the newsroom who had worked here when H.L. Mencken did. He used to use his pencils down to the stub, she told me. "Wow," I remember thinking, not so much about his thriftiness with office supplies - although we did receive a memo about that yesterday - but just the fact that I actually knew someone who knew Mencken. Maybe it's the same in other workplaces - surely there are people in town who knew someone who knew someone who knew the actual Alex.

PNC Financial Services Group's layoffs in Maryland resulting from its acquisition of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. will hit Linthicum, Baltimore City and Frederick the hardest, according to notices the company filed with the state labor department. PNC notified nearly 900 Mercantile employees in Maryland and surrounding states that their positions are being eliminated. Company officials have declined to say exactly how many employees will lose their jobs because some employees might leave on their own and others might move to other positions.

Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Co. NV is offering workers at Sparrows Point another round of five-week layoffs, a sign that the world's largest steelmaker doesn't expect the industrywide slowdown to recover immediately in the new year. It is the third such offer since October as Mittal scales back production to stay on par with demand and avoid an inventory glut. Last month, crude steel production in North America totaled 10.2 million metric tons, down 2.2 percent compared with November a year ago, according to the International Iron and Steel Institute.

The Disposable American: Layoffs and their Consequences Louis Uchitelle Alfred A. Knopf / 304 pages / $25.95 Few Americans have noticed, but France has been convulsed with demonstrations against a new law allowing employers to lay off young workers. At least a million protesters filled streets from Paris to Marseille in recent days, according to news organizations. Politicians trying to add flexibility to France's labor laws talked tough and then backed down, diluting what was already a fairly minor change.

Strategy If layoffs needed, avoid surprises Some organizations may be too quick to cut employees, others too slow. The consequences of either mistake can be disastrous for a business. Sometimes downsizing the work force is the best, if not only, business decision, said John Sullivan, human resources consultant and author of "Rethinking Strategic HR: HR's Role in Building a Performance Culture." Sullivan said the most important thing to remember when considering layoffs is that no one should be surprised by a pink slip.