John Deere lays off hundreds of employees, after a $10B profit year
John Deere lays off hundreds of employees, after a $10B profit year
An unexpected company is now laying off hundreds in Illinois by the end of summer due to a decline in market demand for its products.
Profit doesn't matter if it doesn't make the line go up! It's a failing company because line didn't go up! Tractors aren't the product. Only line is product. All hail line. If we pray to line, perhaps line go up?
Yes, yes, now: about those executive paychecks. We feel $27M per year isn't competitive. We’re thinking more like 500M. To start.
They wouldn't use the word competitive though. They use that word for the lower employees, and its meaning is "we'd pay you lower if we could". Well actually I guess for a few hundred they did just that by going to zero. Nothing can be done though, line is all. The joke at my work is about the company stock price. All praise stock. We don't see anything from it, but it's glorious.
We ONLY made 10 BILLION in profit!?
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK JOHNSON!? We made 10 last year! This year is supposed to be 12 billion!
YOU'RE ALL FIRED!
The inner workings of a Totally Sane Business Economy™
10 to 15 yrs later: "Line no longer go up! We need bailout!, if no bailout, line go down and politicians fired!"
Let us all gather and pray for the ascension of the demarcation.
Me, imitating the pose of a thoughtful looking person I saw in a magazine: have we tried AI the line? Like make AI do the line, and me have more money? Need more money for AI implement line AI money make?
Line them throats, line them wrists,
For the market share
They'd call us terrorists
We can hardly care.
I get why people are upset by the headline. It is written to provoke anger. Unfortunately, anger at the wrong issue.
I understand the argument that a large company can absorb the cost of workers they don't currently. Though it's unrealistic to expect them too.
I lived in the Quad Cities for a number of years. A large majority of people I know, both family and friends, worked for either Deere or Case IH - until they closed the plant in East Moline.
Layoffs are a yearly thing. Deere, Case, Caterpillar, they all hire a bunch of people in the beginning of the year and lay them off towards the end. It's typically around August or September, and they announce it in July. Everyone in the Quad Cities knows it. It is expected. Sometime early next year, they are going to hire these jobs back. The people who take these jobs go into it knowing this is going to happen.
It can suck being let go and some people might struggle with it. Those who are used to this cycle treat it as a well-paying seasonal job. Many already have something else lined up. This is only a single, anecdotal, data point, so take it with a grain of salt... one of my uncles works for Deere and is a bus driver for one of the school districts. He knows Deere is going to let him go by fall so he has the driving job for the rest of the year. In spring, he will go back to Deere.
Perspective is also important. Deere has somewhere between 80k and 85k employees. They are laying off < 1000 based on this story. That's the equivalent of a small, 80 person company hiring 1 person to get through the holiday season, then laying them off in January. Next year, they will do it again.
Headlines like this are nothing more than a distraction from real issues. For example, why does any company have multi-billions of dollars in profit to begin with? It just means they are charging more than they need to. The farmers who buy Deere equipment then have to charge more for their produce. Which means the stores have to charge more. Which means we pay more for our food. Deere's profits are leading to higher food prices for everyone. To me, that is more of an issue than 1/80th of their workforce being in a hire/layoff cycle.
Here's the deal: these people aren't being laid off because the company is losing money, they are being laid off because the company is not making as much money as it predicted it would last quarter.
Now, not making as much money as you thought while still being profitable is not a bad thing except for one person: the c-level executive.
The c-level has profit targets he needs to hit to unlock a huge bonus. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake for him, that one individual.
So these hundreds of people aren't losing their jobs so the company can thrive and be healthy. They're losing their jobs so one person can make hundreds of thousands of dollars more on top of their existing salary which was always guaranteed to them.
WHOOPS I didn't mean to reply to you lol, just to the post.
If anyone hasn't watched the latest wendover productions video I highly recommend it.
It covers John deere's transition into a technology company and details why they're laying off a lot of their factory workers. Link
You know it didn't use to be this way? There was a time when you could be 'A GE man'. You could work at a company for your whole life. You would not get laid off and rehired whenever it was convenient for the company, rather they'd show you some loyalty and you'd show them the same, this would be backed by employee profit sharing schemes, incentivising higher performance.
The heart of this deal between workers and management was ripped out when management chased higher share valuations, with stock bonuses for themselves instead of workers. It became cheaper to fire 1/80th of the workforce because you could break up unions that way, management could write off all those salaries to bump up the quarterly earnings, increasing the stock price and earning themselves bonuses at the expense of workers who as you said, just learn to get by.
Powell memo. That’s when it started.
You're looking at it from the perspective of the customer, but another aspect to get angry about is what is completely insane to someone who doesn't live in the US. How the fuck can a company hire people who they're going to let go in less than a year, and do that year and year? Where I live that's illegal. The government will grab the company by the balls if they do that.
If you're a company and you want to fire someone you first have to give a good reason why their position is being removed, then you need a good reason why you can't give them a different position within the company and finally, when you've actually fired the person, you need to give them a government regulated severance package, which is usually multiple months pay in advance. And you can't fire on the spot, you need to give at minimum a 2 week notice. In case you didn't notice, those are rules of you just want to fire a single person, layoffs have even more rules. In short, where I live companies use layoffs as a last resort because it's guaranteed to lose them money.
The entire hire/layoff cycle you take as something normal is something not normal to me. So this is a reminder to Americans that it is not normal and you can demand for more.
2 weeks! It is 3 months in norway for most work. This is mutual so it works both ways.
Seasonal/contract work is different tho, they know the start and end date when signing.
Nothing about the situation you described is normal or acceptable.
Though it's unrealistic to expect them too.
Why is that an unrealistic expectation? That's how it works in many countries with decent worker rights
Damn it I came in here to rage... Then read your post. Very well said and reasoned. Thank you for this perspective.
Maybe it's just my feed but lately all my posts are just rage/anger baits.... I want some good educational news damn it!
If anyone hasn't watched the latest Wendover Productions video, I highly recommend it.
It covers John Deere's transition into a technology company and details why they're laying off a lot workers. Link
I think they're going "fabless", and focusing on the automation technology and leaving the manufacturing to third parties.
It's not inflation if companies are posting record profits.
$10 billion might be record breaking but not the record breaking you are thinking of. 2017 was the last time they posted profits around $10 billion or less.
If a company makes 10 billion dollars, they should be able to hire more people or pay everyone more. Instead that money is siphoned by unemployed bums who have absolutely nothing to do with the company - the “investors.”
If this system weren’t already in place, we would consider it completely comical.
Sure. But they aren't the only ones posting record profits in the past few years.
The need for year-over-year growth is ultimately strangling the system. At the moment it is easy to lay a bunch of people off and claim that growth. Eventually (at some point in the future), it won't be mathematically possible unless the C-suite starts taking pay cuts, or they at least start eschewing their crazy bonuses. Expect them to milk that for good press ("These forward-thinking CEOs are dumping the bonuses for... insert any random bullshit here!") or other such marketing nonsense.
Eventually, it will stop, when the system no longer functions at all. Infinite year-over-year growth across the board is an impossibility.
Not good enough for Republicans. John Deere has to abandon any and all programs to have a diverse workforce.
We’re living through the shittiest part of late-stage capitalism. It’ll never be good for typical people again.
I dunno I think we can do better, just saying.
Trickle down economics at work folks.
Only thing trickling down is the BS they're presenting us.
I think we found out who ate all the pies.
I'm MUCH Happier with my Tax Dollars going to these Job Creators laying off Workers then to Feed Starving American Children!
-Fiscally Responsible Jesus Humping Republicans!
7-8 billion actually. But I suppose they rounded up.
https://thehill.com/business/4750201-john-deere-laying-off-hundreds-of-midwest-workers/
What’s a few billion between the bourgeoisie.
The struggle is glorious innit
Billionaires aren’t the bourgeoisie. They are the aristocrats. The bourgeoisie is more like six-figure annual income in the US.
Ah, it's last year vs this year. I get it.
John Deer stock buybacks
- April 30, 2024: $1.1 billion
- January 31, 2024: $1.3 billion
- October 31, 2023: $2.6 billion
- July 31, 2023: $2.1 billion
- April 30, 2023: $1.3 billion
- January 31, 2023: $1.3 billion
- October 31, 2022: $1.2 billion
- July 31, 2022: $1.3 billion
Total: $12.2 billion in 2 years.So putting drm in your tractors isnt giving you enough money so you fire hundred of employees? are there any chances that all or some of them suggested to remove your stupid drm that is affecting farmers all around the word?
Most people know this recent history, but in case you missed it:
So payback for right-to-repair? Feh. They’d have done it anyway. Flag-wavers in farm country expecting some incoming cognitive dissonance.
Payback wasn't the point, I was just providing some context. John Deere sucks for multiple reasons.
What a weird choice to have an image of Pritzker for this article.
Agreed. I don’t know much about the source but it might just be an indication of the author’s intent, if there is a human author.
There is a much better image choice to be used and it would not take much effort.
Update: Saw the pic, read the article, but didn’t realize the forum until afterwards. Will just move and pretend.
Why is the picture of pritzker? Is he laying people off?
That was last quarter. You don't have to be very good at economics to look at world crop supplies, the age of the current farming equipment fleet, and other such data and conclude this next year will be tough for ag companies like Deere.
Of course the above is nothing new - ag is a cyclical business, you see the above ever 5-10 years. Previous to the current CEO the last layoffs of this type of position was the mid 1980s - several other CEOs saw the same signs the current one does and were able to manage it without layoffs.
Are you feeling sorry for a soulless company that they didn't steal enough pay from the employees and now they need to fire people to improve their quarterly report?
I'm strictly reporting facts. How you feel about them is your decision. Though I suspect you didn't read everything I wrote if you come to that conlusion.