As a manager I personally had to lay off 15 of my employees yesterday. Yes, it sucks as bad as I thought it would.

Eek. What percentage of your staff is that?

It probably means that the Wendy's by winco is closing down.

About 4%

Best of luck to you guys at IGT. I'm assuming there's some level of risk that you could lose your jobs? :(

Yeah, like 1 in 10 by the numbers.

But that's not as bad as my GF. She just got an email this morning that her company is laying off 1 in 4. She'll be lucky if her whole office doesn't get whacked. But I guess when you're stock goes from $70 to $4 in a year (and from $40 to $4 in just the last month), your CEO resigns, and "all new development will be stopped"... well, you can't expect everyone to keep their jobs. If you wanna see how the credit crunch hurts people, take a look at the industrial property management industry. :(

Nobody is safe... it's really scary. I'm crossing my fingers for us all.

Not even us state employees are safe. At least we'll still have jobs, so I'm lucky. And at least nobody will lose their job.


CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Gov. Jim Gibbons says pay cuts for state employees - including a cut in his own salary - would be a better option than layoffs to deal with a growing revenue shortfall.

The state already has cut spending by $1.2 billion and must cut another $300 million this fiscal year, but Gibbons said at an impromptu news conference that wholesale layoffs of state employees is "untenable."

The governor will meet with legislative leaders next Monday to talk about possible solutions to the immediate $300 million shortfall and to a projected shortfall of $1.5 billion in the next 2-year budget cycle, which opens in July.

Gibbons said pay reductions aren't something he could do on his own. Instead, lawmakers would have to authorize the step in a brief special session prior to the regular 2009 session which starts Feb. 2.

While Gibbons said on Friday that "nothing is off the table" in discussions on solutions, including new or increased taxes, he said Monday that he remains opposed to such levies unless they're backed by the general public or by an industry affected by a specific increase.

I've decided that what I do at my office (real estate) is no longer going to be my job, rather I now refer to my efforts as a "hobby".

I heard that IGT is going to lay off 500 people between today and tomorrow. Involuntary and voluntary layoffs I guess. I hope your name doesn't make that list Scott.:(

Yup, across the whole organization that's how many we are facing. The "hundreds" number is for engineering. So, we'll see.

Fixed.

wow, I didn't know there were more IGT club members. I put in a good word for you guys but they said the main targets are employees who spend company time on internet forums. So you should all be safe.

Kunikos (Matt) too, although I don't think many of you outside of IGT know him either.

Everyone still employed?

So far. We'll see about tomorrow.

Good luck guys. We've only laid off 6 people here so far, but they just announced 700 people are going down at HQ in Phoenix over the next 3 years. We've already laid off ~6,000 people from my site in the past 10 years so we don't have too many left to go.

Well, it looks like the IGT SECCSers are all safe. We only lost one person from our immediate group.

That's a relief, but still shitty for your coworkers.

The worst part is really just the massive "morale landslide" around here. No one works hard at anything but covering their own asses and blaming each other anymore.

Thanks for the update. Glad to hear you guys made it. Is your old roommate Matt still at IGT?

Yeah, he's still hear... at least he's still showing up on our company IM client as "online".

I think that is the way it is at a lot of places these days...

[Another IGT engineer survivor here] The PC's locking you out automatically after 5 min is also a pain. I don't know if this is company wide but I'm sure it's a precaution against angry fellows.

^I think I see your car at Walmart in south Reno all the time.

I forgot you work at IGT too! What dept. are you in? How bad was the attrition there?

IIRC Eggegg was under Bansemer, and according to Jason and Matt, it wasn't too bad there.

Yes, still with Bansemer. I think just one person from our group was let go. No major changes, just some shifting of cubicles.

Yes, that's where I get new movies on Tuesdays, and sometimes candy. I've seen your car there before also.

GM stock at a 66 year low.

http://www.forbes.com/reuters/feeds/...-UPDATE-2.html

If there's a bailout for these schmucks, it better include a requirement that they drop 70% of their vehicles and start selling some decent cars. I gotta be honest, if GM went away, the only car I'd miss is the Corvette.

In other news... IGT hit $8.58 today, which is like a 9 year low. I wish they would reissue my g-damned stock options at this price! :unamused:

Well that blows because yesterday I bought stock at $10 a share, thinking it had bottomed out already. LOL Well, regardless I will be holding it for a few years-- this isn't a short-term investment. :)

... just short term :P

I gotta be honest, if GM went away, the only car I'd miss is the Corvette.

I agree, it's gotta be done, time for some tough love.

Can you believe that the big three CEO's arrived in DC yesterday in separate private jets to go begging for $25 BILLION from the government i.e. taxpayers!! What a crock of s*#t!

Geniuses, these guys are not.

Corporate rules dictate that their CEOs fly in private jets for security purposes. I'm sure they didn't even think about it.

Not flying on a private jet for one day is hardly going to save the company from the brink of failure. It costs, what, $2,500 to operate the jet for one trip in comparison with the $25 billion they need? The mock outrage over this is is really just a political red herring. You think that congressmen don't fly around in private jets all the time?

The real outrage should be over bailing out yet another company without bailing out the shareholders, all while claiming that America is about free market capitalism. Let's all either stop giving that phrase lip service and stop giving hand-outs to inept companies who will fail regardless, or let's go whole-hog socialist and make the Detroit 3 into nationalized auto-makers.

Red herring or not, if you're going to ask the taxpayers to save your ass, you ought to do a better PR job, which includes looking like you're doing everything you can to save money, even if it's not going to make any real difference in the outcome.

That said, the auto industry (and the banking industry for that matter) deserve to fail. Especially in the auto industry, the writing was on the wall... did they really think that people would continue to pay $50,000 for $15,000 trucks with leather seats? Even if there weren't the gas or environmental crises, none of the US manufacturers had anything in the pipeline simply for when the public got tired of SUVs.

Preeeecisely. They have been taking huge advantage of the virtual money supply (credit), in combination with cheaper technology and lax international trade regs for decades! They have no-one to blame but themselves for cruising along with the windowshade on the dash pretending that it was going to last forever.....think of it as part of the long-term cost of doing business......businesses fail all the time because the owners can't think ahead, the BIG 3 need to join that party.

I am sick over the fact that our populace is so stupid to even consider the possibilty of .gov-sponsored bailouts.

I wouldn't be bothered by bailouts if in fact we were a socialist country that was regulating industry all along. I have a problem with allowing a bunch of companies to make a mess of money during the boom while requiring the middle class to pick up the tab when boom turns to bust. Live by the free-market sword, die by the free-market sword.

If those companies want to be rescued, then all the CEO's that made the most need to be the folks putting in the most money for the bailout. Problem is, they can lose half their fortunes and still walk away from the situation filthy rich. Meanwhile some poor UAW line worker is going to lose his job, pension, etc while being used to making $30/hr for borderline unskilled labor. Where's someone that's used to making good money and has no skills applicable to another industry going to go? That's the guy that the CEO should be paying back his last decade's worth of bonuses to so he can go back to school to learn a new trade.

The right answer is to let all the automakers declare bankruptcy, and either wait for the void to get filled by some new manufacturers that can do things right, or to fully socialize the auto industry like France did with Renault. Either way, the guys at the top that are flying around in their private jets deserve to be out of work.

Most public officials fly commercial as far as I know. First class maybe, but commercial.

If their PR departments had a clue, they would have caravaned up with their accompanying staff in the most modern energy efficient prototypes they have in their fleets. There are so many cost cutting things they could do that would cut burn rates substantially. Selling jets is among them...

And why the heck would you ever bail out the shareholders? The owners of a company are the last concern in any bailout as it should be. That is probably the last piece of capitalism that they have not completely destroyed with these socialist bailouts.

A Pre-packaged bailout is the only way to truly save any of the the little 3 auto names. Breaking labor and dealer contracts is the only thing that will let them restructure to the point where they have a chance to be competitive. And I say little because their market cap is about that of a cup of coffee, or at least the market cap of Starbucks. Yep, F and GM combined are 5B, and SBUX is 5.7B. Don't know what chrysler is, but probably less than GM's 1.7B.

No, it's more in the range of $20,000 actual. My CEO spent over $50k on a helicopter to take him to dinner, it happens.

This is hysterical...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

...but not so much in a good way. This Peter Shiff guy should be allowed to just walk up and punch any financial pundit on Fox News with total impunity.

I remember watching that first part of the clip earlier this year. Made me laugh. Especially the d-bag that disagrees with him. Schiff owes a lot of people at Fox cockpunches.

:lol: I have very little sympathy for UAW guys who never went to college and run an air rachet for a living that make a hell of a lot more than I do.

suck scc done
despite their downhill product the last couple of years, it was still the only car mag I bought of the stands whenever I saw a new issue

Yeah, what a racket.

Why don't the oil companies bailout the automakers?:?:

Turns out Japanese cars don't actually burn rice, so the oil companies have no stake in whose cars are burning their product up in a wasteful and impudent manner. ;)

That's a freakin' great idea. It's in their best interest to keep American gas guzzlers comin'.

This is actually genius in its simplicity.

The US Gov't should windfall tax the oil companies the exact amount they give to the automakers in a bailout.