Sandy Springs-based UPS is laying off more of its employees, after earlier this year announcing it was cutting 12,000 jobs in its management ranks.
UPS made $7 Billion dollars net profit last year. It was a decline from the 11.5 Billion net profit they made in 2022.
I find it hard to criticize a company for culling middle management. Most of those jobs are useless at best and detrimental at worst.
HA! The Marketing and Sales jobs will go untouched, there is no doubt. IT managers, get ready to sling some boxes. Customer Service? Dang I forgot you were still here, ha ha - gtfo.
They closed all the customer counters. So if you want your shit and have to sign for it, you better be there or you are SOL.
I tend to agree but also see the other side of it in the corporation that I work for. There are a lot of stupid tasks that need to be done that are best handled by someone in middle management as it doesn’t take the managed employees away from the actual work and is something that needs to be done even if it outside the scope of our actual work.
Where I am, it’s selfishness, backstabbing, and politics that are the biggest hinderence from middle managers. Without being specific, you might have someone proposing an idea that, when implemented, will sound good on paper and make them look good while actually causing our work to be completed more slowly. Additionally, you have other people who have the answers to specific problems we face as employees, but they don’t want to share it because they won’t get credit and a promotion for it.
I don’t doubt some of this is optimization in the middle. But they (as with so many companies) have expressed interest in reducing the working force with AI and robotics too. Mechanical workers show up for work, don’t have HR or other issues to deal with, and can work when you need them. I.e. cheaper in even the short run. Now with UPS being union there’s going to be a bit of friction there, but they’ll figure it out. Maybe give a bit more to the workers who are allowed to stay (which is good for them I suppose). Other companies that don’t have that protection, well…there’s other jobs, right?
They’re doing it too much though. Lots of onroads are being forced to work 10-14 hour days, multiple days in a row. They cut support staff so those few people have to do more.
And they’re not firing/retaining by who does a good job or who has more skills. They’re doing it randomly. One guy I know, one of the best dispatchers in his center, got kicked out because they drew lots on who to fire.
Peak Lemmy. These 20000 people will just self organize 🤣
There is usually room for optimization but pretending like you didn’t need middle management is a big tell you’ve never actually done this, studied it, and are ignorant on the topic. But yeah I’m sure billionaires are paying these folks out of charity 🙄.