Economic Crisis, Job Cuts | featured news

Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of ailing Royal Bank of Scotland, was criticized for keeping his $1 million pension despite a string of ill-timed acquisitions under his reign.

Striking French workers of an American manufacturing company looked likely to hold their boss hostage for a second night on Wednesday after locking him in for more than 24 hours, as nationwide anger mounted over layoffs.

Oilfield services provider Baker Hughes has begun laying off 1,500 workers, or about 4% of its workforce, as part of a second round of cuts resulting from the economic downturn.

AOL is backing out of mainland China – again. Other than a PR rep or two, the company fired all 100 or so of its employees in its Beijing office, according Chinese portal Netease.com. The Wall Street Journal says the AOL China site hasn't been updated since Tuesday. The cuts are a part of AOL's plan to slash 10% of its workforce worldwide.

United Technologies Corp cut its 2009 profit target by about 13 percent and said it would eliminate 11,600 jobs as it no longer anticipates an economic recovery this year.

The practice gives workers some security but, over time, employee morale still suffers.

Rising unemployment in Europe and the U.S. invites instability.

U.S. private companies hemorrhaged nearly 700,000 jobs in February and the service sector slump deepened as the year-old recession showed little sign of abating, according to data released on Wednesday.

Nissan Motor Co. Monday said it has swung to a fiscal third quarter loss on a "severe downturn in the global economy" and the impact of a strengthened yen, adding the deterioration in business conditions forced the Japanese auto major to slash its full-year profit and revenue forecasts.

U.S. employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January, the deepest cut in payrolls in 34 years as the national unemployment rate shot up to 7.6 percent, according to a Labor Department report on Friday that underlined a deepening recession.