GOODYEAR LAYOFF: Goodyear to fire 5000, freeze salaries

Goodyear Layoff news - latest announcement

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. is the largest U.S. tiremaker. Goodyear has announced that it will layoff 5000 employees. The 5000 jobs to be cut will be cut worldwide by the end of 2009. Moreover, the Goodyear layoff announcement also said that it will freeze salaries and cut production capacity.

The following quote is from Reuters:

Goodyear said the planned 5,000 job cuts will come from the salaried and hourly ranks worldwide, but did not specify how the cuts would be divided or what regions they would come from.

Goodyear, the Arkon Ohio-based company, has already cut 4000 jobs in the second half of 2008 and the above job layoffs are in addition to these job cuts. Goodyear employes around 71000 workers worldwide, thus the above job cuts amount to reducing its total workforce by about 7%.

Reason for Goodyear layoff - Goodyear job redundancies

Goodyear Chief Executive Robert Keegan said

"The global economic slowdown has increased both in severity and geographic scope throughout the year. We are aggressively adjusting our plans to the new market realities,"

Goodyear had reported a net loss of $330 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 as compared to a $53 million profit in the same quarter last year. The above job layoffs and cuts in production are a part of Goodyear's restructuring program which is aimed at reducing costs by about $700 million this year.