OIL INDUSTRY CUTS MORE JOBS. Royal Dutch Shell is lopping 330 jobs from its North Sea operations over the next two years, most of them office slots in Aberdeen.
About 1,500 Aberdeen workers already have taken voluntary buyout deals.
Shell also is vaporizing 900 jobs from its Netherlands center, about 10 percent of that locale’s workforce.
The company will gradually shed more jobs as a major North Sea production platform is gradually decommissioned.
The company had to “remove a certain amount of organizational complexity” to “make the best of the core capabilities we need to succeed,” Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said in a statement announcing the layoffs.
Last September, Shell announced plans to lose 9 to 11 percent of its 83,000-strong global workforce by 2022 as it strives to cut at least $2 billion annually in payroll costs.
Oil giant BP previously announced the elimination of about 10,000 jobs, roughly 15 percent of its global payroll, also mostly office spots. ExxonMobil is cutting the same percentage of its staff, about 14,000 workers and contractors, with almost 2,000 employees being dropped from the Houston management office.
CANADA’S AIRLINES FACE “EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.” Air Canada, the nation’s emblematic airline, is dumping 1,900 workers and cutting 25 percent of its service routes.
The shrinkage means the airline is flying only about 20 percent of the routes and schedules it did at the beginning of 2019, the company said in announcing the new reductions.
Canadian air traffic last October was 83 percent below that of a year previous, Statistics Canada reported, leading Michael McNaney, president of the National Airlines Council of Canada (NACC), to tell the Toronto Star that the nation’s airline industry is facing “an existential crisis.”
Canada’s government has enacted aid packages to the industry during the crisis but, despite promises, has not allotted aid to airlines specifically.
“If we don’t get this right” – meaning government support for air carriers – “the economic recovery of the country overall will absolutely be undermined,” McNaney said.
However, “before we spend one penny of taxpayer money on airlines, we will ensure that regional communities retain air connections to the rest of Canada, Canadian air carriers maintain their status as key customers of Canada’s aerospace industry,” and that customers receive refunds for tickets purchased for flights that later were canceled, a spokesperson for the country’s transport ministry said in a public statement.
NORWEGIAN AIR FIGHTS FOR SURVIVAL. The Scandinavian airline has abandoned long-haul flights to the U.S. and Asia, closing bases in Britain and Spain, costing 2,000 workers their jobs, and will concentrate on short hops around Europe as it exits bankruptcy.
The airline’s financial reorganization leaves shareholders with about 5 percent of the company and creditors holding 25 percent. Trading equity for debt will cut the amount the airline owes from about $6 billion to $2.5 billion.
The airline filed bankruptcy last fall after Norway’s conservative government refused the carrier’s request for a second bailout. The government has indicated that it is more open to supporting Norwegian under its new plan.
RENAULT CUTS PAYROLL, FACTORY SPACE. The French carmaker will cut its production capacity from four million cars to 3.1 million by 2025, closing at least some factories outside of France and turfing out 15,000 workers as part of a strategic shift “from volume to value,” the company said.
The carmaker will halve its number of vehicle platforms from six to three and engine variations from eight to four, with 80 percent of its cars built in partnership with Nissan.
By 2025, the company wants 20 percent of its revenue to come from services and data.
DROPBOX STOCK SLIPS. The company’s share price dipped more than 5 percent on 13 January with news that the company is cutting 11 percent of its jobs – about 315 positions – and COO Olivia Nottebohm is leaving.
The cut violates the company’s commitment, made last spring, to keep staff, CEO Drew Houston acknowledged in a letter to staffers announcing the cuts. But “it’s clear we need to make changes to create a healthy and thriving business for the future,” he told workers.
Dropbox has adopted a “virtual first” employment policy, cutting employees who need to be at an office to do their jobs.
STARBUCKS CLOSING UP TO 300 CANADIAN STORES BY APRIL. As part of its five-year “transformation strategy,” Starbucks will close as many as 300 of its Canadian stores by the end of March.
Previously, the company had announced plans to close up to 200 stores in Canada over two years.
Starbucks has said it is closing downtown sit-down stores now that, for many office workers, commuting is becoming a thing of the past.
Instead, the coffee giant is building suburban drive-through stores, expanding delivery services, and testing curbside pickup-only shops.
Canada’s first pickup-only Starbucks, measuring about 30 feet square, opened last January in Toronto’s business district.
EAGLE HOSPITALITY REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY. As a result of the lockdowns, which have devastated the tourism and business travel industry, the investment trust, which owns a portfolio of corporate, leisure, and airport hotels across the U.S., filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware on Monday.
Last week, Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C., one of the largest hotels in D.C., which opened in 1918, filed for bankruptcy.
