Bah, humbug!

Time was when American corporations would wait until after the Christmas season to distribute pink slips. But the spirit of Scrooge came to Wall Street this week, with the announcements of major workplace layoffs by some of America's leading companies, including Boeing, Kellogg and the merging Exxon-Mobil.The layoffs are casting a gloom over both Christmas and eight years of economic boom times.

President Clinton Wednesday blamed the layoffs at Boeing on Asia's continuing economic woes but said he is concerned because the administration sought to protect jobs in the aerospace industry, already hit by declines in Pentagon purchases after the Cold War ended.

"This, I think, is purely and simply a function of the downturn in Asia. We saw it first in our farming communities, where the price of grain dropped because Asian purchases dropped so much," Clinton said.

John Challenger, chief executive officer with the Chicago out-placement firm of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, says announcements of layoffs over the Christmas season are a part of just-in-time economics that rule today's corporate suites.

"In the past, companies were more aware and committed with their public image not to be seen as Scrooge," Challenger said. "This is meant to be a time of good cheer and letting things get slower. But for companies today, that's harder to do."

Challenger's firm has been tracking what it says is a noticeable increase in job-cut announcements this fall, with October announcements reaching a 33-month high of 91,531. In the previous month, companies announced intentions to lay off 73,062.

Challenger said layoffs are a result of a wave of corporate mergers, the economic turmoil in Asia and Wall Street's pressure to produce profits. "Shareholders don't care about layoffs; it's the stakeholders and the communities that care."

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Fred Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board, a corporate funded research institute in New York, noted that companies began thinning corporate payrolls in 1991.

But he added that doesn't mean doom and gloom. He said monthly unemployment reports, compiled by the Department of Labor, show an average of 300,000 first-time requests for unemployment, down from 330,000 last year, and the economy continues to percolate.

"It's not as if the lumpenproletariat are out there selling apples in front of Macy's," he said.

Goldstein said Congress is to blame for announcements coming during the Christmas season. Because of 1988 plant-closing legislation, companies have to give 60-day advance notification of layoffs, and announcements of layoffs in December won't begin to be implemented until the new year.

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