Recession Chills an Australian Icon

[wheelspinner]

Yesterday it was announced that an Australian icon, the diversified industrial group Nylex, had gone into receivership.

business.theage.com.au/business/fragile-nylex-finally-brought-down-20090213-876i.html?page=-1

The Nylex brand has been part of Melbourne's fabric for decades. Melbournians look to "the Nylex sign" down by the Yarra River, which has shown us the time and temperature since 1961. It is one of our few heritage-listed neon signs.



The clock has even been celebrated in song by one of our greatest song-writers:

"I'm high on the hill
Looking over the bridge
To the MCG
And way up on high
The clock on the silo
Says eleven degrees"

- Leaps and Bounds, Paul Kelly

Even sadder is that Nylex is the producer of one of those quintessential symbols of Australia - the Esky. Every Aussie family has at least one Esky. It's one of those brand names, like Xerox and Hoover, that have passed into the language as a generic term.

No doubt the sign and the Esky will keep on, but it's sobering to realise that even being an indelible part of the country's cultural landscape cannot save you when times get tough.

[MacBeth]

So much of that happening these days....Rochester is home to Kodak and Xerox. And they are a shadow of what they once were.

And my corporation is laying off 21,000 and shuttering 27 divisions. Including mine.

[wheelspinner]

21,000 is a huge swathe in anyone's terms. I work for a global giant and that would be 20% of our entire workforce.

Hope you are going to land on your feet Beth.

[oskar]

Something is not ringing true in all of this. How is it that so many large and "successful" entities are suddenly crashing when their balance sheets looked so good a year or so ago?

[wayneinfl]

Ouch, Beth. I'm sorry to hear that.

The hammer fell for some of us Wednesday, but we e were already down to a kind of a skeleton crew. We lost 12 installers and the project managers and engineers at our office.

[MacBeth]

Many companies are doing it because they can under the cover of the other companies that have no choice in the matter.

They know they can always rehire people at a lower rate of pay in a year or 18 months. Not a pretty picture, but a true one.

[wayneinfl]

They won't rehire anyone. Our company wants to get reduce employees as much as possible. They're looking to have an employee running a project, and have the work done by contractors. In the past they've had several experienced employees Installer I's, II's and III's working on a job together.

In the new areas they've acquired contracts in they're looking for Installer IV's to run jobs and they'll bring in contractors making $15 an hour with no benefits to do the work.

[Calluna]

Feb 14, 2009 16:38:34 GMT -5 MacBeth said:

Many companies are doing it because they can under the cover of the other companies that have no choice in the matter.

They know they can always rehire people at a lower rate of pay in a year or 18 months. Not a pretty picture, but a true one.

Sort of like the late 80's, early 90s when the pharmaceutical industry was hurting. They'd "downsize" and layoff whole swathes of people, then would rehire the best back as "temps" under the guise that they were only being hired for specific projects but couldn't afford to bring them back permanently. This allowed them to cut the salaries, still keep their best people, and deny them benefits because they were temps, not permanent employees. And of course, eventually they were rehired permanently again...but never saw their pay restored to what it had been.

And, then there are some employers who are simply using the economy as a reason to get rid of the employees who SHOULD have been fired a long time ago, but the bosses didn't have the balls to deal with.

My boyfriend's firm just laid off both staff and lawyers, and he heard that about 200 lawyers in the field were just laid off. He's scrambling to bill more to ensure his own job security (so far he's okay...he actually has partners coming to him to find work because he's one of the few that has more work than he can handle still...nonetheless, he's trying to pawn off more of the non-billable work just so he can keep his numbers looking good...he has to stop being the nice guy and watch out for the numbers the partners count).

I'm just glad I have a 3 year contract and in a field that's fairly insulated from economic downturns...I'll probably be very overworked in a few years as those about to retire in my department probably won't be replaced until the economy is more clearly in a recovery phase, but I don't think I have to worry about losing my job since there are already too few faculty for all our courses, even if class sizes shrink (which I don't expect to happen). I'm just making sure to become indispensable and not turning down any course assignments, even if I would be justified to do so (the other new hire seems to have a lot of excuses of why he can't teach this or that lecture or class, and if that attitude doesn't change, I wonder what will happen when it's time for his contract to be renewed).

By the way, what's an Esky?

[Georgina]

Esky is an Australian brand of coolers manufactured by Nylex. The name is a reference to the association of Eskimos with cold climates. The term has become a genericized trademark and as such is a colloquial term in Australia for any portable icebox or cooler.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esky

[wheelspinner]

Feb 14, 2009 22:27:57 GMT -5 Calluna said:

By the way, what's an Esky?

Picture is worth a thousand words ...