26 March 2015 (15:45 UTC-07 Tango 01)/06 Farvardin 1394/05 Jumada t-Tania 1436/07 Ji Mao 4713
“…these are brands that I like 30 plus years ago and I like them today, and I think I like them 30 years from now.”-Warren Buffett, after merging his Heinz with Kraft and then announcing $1-billion USD in job cuts
Yes, apparently if you like a company’s products you take them over and layoff the people who make those products, at least that’s the philosophy of Warren Buffett and his vulture capitalist ‘investment’ schemes called Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital.
In 2013 they took over Heinz, then immediately began killing jobs in the U.S. and Canada. In November, Buffett’s partners announced that little ol’ Pocatello, Idaho, would lose 610 jobs in 2014, because Buffet decided to give the local Heinz plant the axe. That was a major blow to communities (Pocatello and Chubbuck) with a combined population of less than 80-thousand, and already suffering from at least a decade of job losses.
Reports say that so far 6650 Heinz employees, worldwide, have become jobless!
This latest Buffett deal will make Kraft-Heinz the 5th largest food company in the World. According to Nightly Business Report the “first order of business” is to kill $1-billion worth of cost, mainly in marketing and manufacturing, that’s translates directly to job killing. ‘Investors’ loved the news of job killing (as they always do) and pushed Heinz stock prices upward by 35%.
The Wall Street Journal explains that Buffett’s current plans are corporate austerity measures, or Zero Based Budgeting. Basically companies are taken over then the employees are forced to justify every little thing they do, and if ‘investors’ don’t like what they see those employees get fired. And that’s the kicker, everything is done from the point of view of an ‘investor’, not somebody who’s on the front line trying to run a business making and selling products or services. If you’ve worked the front lines of business you know there are things you have to do that just wouldn’t make sense to a bean counter who’s only interest is the “bottom line”.
The Wall Street Journal reports Zero Based Budgeting has become the norm for almost all publicly owned (they issue stocks to the public) food companies. This can only mean a snowballing of job cuts.
Now realize that unAmerican Buffett reportedly spent $10-billion on the Kraft-Heinz deal, and his Brazilian based 3G Capital reportedly spent $49-billion to merge Heinz and Kraft! That could have created a lot of jobs!
How can these ‘investors’ expect to sell the products they “like” if they’re killing jobs for many of the customers who buy those products? Reality check; those ‘investors’ don’t really “like” the products you and I buy in a market place called a grocery store. The ‘products’ they “like” are called stocks, or shares or even corporate bonds, and they sell them in a market place called Wall Street!
(Wall Street is an actual place, but in this case it refers to all stock market trading houses)
Kraft Foods announced they are killing 285 jobs!
In Pittsburgh, Wall Street wunderkind Warren Buffett killed 775 more Heinz jobs.
In Pittsburgh, 350 people lost their jobs with Heinz.
3G Capital is known for “cutting up” companies (typical Romneyite vulture capitalists)