Ericsson Slashes 10% Of U.S. Work Force--1,400 Jobs

What's that you say? You're calling me over your Sprint wireless network to tell me how great the economic recovery is going? I'm sorry, but I can't make out what you're saying. We must have a bad connection. Call me back later.

Here is the story from the Kansas City Star:

Ericsson Inc., the company that operates the Sprint wireless network, eliminated 130 Kansas City area jobs this week as part of a company-wide 10 percent employment cut.

The employees let go across Ericsson’s North America operations will receive severance, though the cuts were based on an annual performance evaluation the company does, said Carolyn Curtis, director of communications.

The evaluations lead to job loss for the employees ranked in the bottom 10 percent.

“It’s painful, but it’s an exercise we go through … to ensure we have a high performance culture,” Curtis said.

Curtis said the job cuts would not affect Ericsson’s ability to run the wireless networks that Sprint Nextel Corp. relies on for its core service. Sprint’s faster 4G services runs on a network built and managed by Clearwire Corp.

She declined to say whether Ericsson would replace any of the employees.

Ericsson’s job cuts across North America hit 10 percent of its 14,000 workforce, Curtis said.

Wow, that's the first time I've ever read a layoff notice in which the company actually had the stones to come right out and call the employees they are firing a bunch of slackjawed losers. Sure, I absolutely believe that if the CEO's nephew were to score in that bottom 10% he'd be let go instead of someone who doesn't have a relative working in senior management. Because America's corporate culture is all based on merit. No fucking nepotism or favoritism allowed. And if you believe that fucking nonsense, you probably also believe that fucking George W. Bush got to attend Yale and Harvard, got run an oil company, got to buy the Texas Rangers, got to be gubbner of Texas and then got elected president because he was such fucking high achiever and not because his asshole old man arranged for his every move up the ladder of "success."

Oh, and I also absolutely believe that slashing one-tenth of the workforce will not effect "Ericsson's ability to run the wireless networks that Sprint Nextel Corp. relies on for its core service." Because those fired workers surely didn't actually do anything for the company--they just sat in their offices all day turning coffee into pee and surfing porn sites.

Oh, and I also really believe that this move was done "to ensure the company has a high performance culture” and not to line the golden parachutes of the CEO and other senior executives, because they would NEVER be so crass as to fire the little people in order to improve their own bottom line. Perish the thought.

You know what else I believe in? Rainbow colored unicorns that shit Skittles night and day.

I really do.


Bonus: "The people who ran these companies were the greediest group of fuckers ever"