Only last month, a 48-hour strike was held over proposals to lay off 950 ticketing staff.
Procter & Gamble executives announced this month that they were increasing the amount of money available for stock buybacks to $6 billion from $4 billion at the same time that they were preparing to lay off over 5,000 employees.
The Clinton/Gore Administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2000 intensifies these worries: It would force the Veterans Administration to lay off over 8,000 health care workers and to close numerous community clinics.
A lack of new products kept revenues low throughout the year, forcing the company to lay off over 100 employees in mid-November.
And unemployment is now a big worry, as construction firms and estate agencies fall over themselves to lay off staff.
For example, in Belgium, shop workers from the Carrefour supermarket chain are braced for a nationwide strike over plans to lay off nearly 2,000 staff at Belgian stores and depots.
(The 5,600 workers Telefónica plans to lay off over the next three years went unmentioned).
She said he had been despondent over having had to lay off most of the employees of his art business that week.
France Italy Unions called four-hour stoppage at airports in January over Alitalia plan to lay off 2,500 employees or 15% of its workforce.
For three decades, Mr. Butler has been one of the city's most outspoken and colorful union leaders, denouncing mayor after mayor over their plans to lay off hospital workers and shrink the city's public hospital system.
But he continues to struggle with the union over his desire to lay off so-called absent-teacher reserves, teachers whose positions have been eliminated because of school closings or classroom shifts, but who are entitled to full salaries because they have not done anything wrong.
