"NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) today announced the next stage of its category business model execution, which includes the restructuring of its business to further enhance its consumer focus and drive innovation more quickly to market. This realignment will drive greater efficiencies throughout the organization and may result in an overall reduction of up to four percent of the company’s workforce. NIKE, Inc. employs nearly 35,000 people worldwide."
It might be useful, here, to provide a "keeping it real" translation by SNEWS® of the above soft-shoe dance around the word "'layoff:"
"...includes the restructuring of its business to further enhance its consumer focus..." = "We are not selling enough product "
"...drive innovation more quickly to market..." = "We need to quickly come up with more expensive gizmoes and gadgets to sell."
"This realignment will drive greater efficiencies throughout the organization..." = "We will find more ways than you could possibly imagine to get fewer people to do the same work for no extra pay. And yes, we're going to need you all to come in on Saturday to complete those TPS reports."
"...and may result in an overall reduction of up to four percent of the company’s workforce." = "We expect to layoff people."
This press release could have been a whole lot cleaner if Nike had simply stated, "Due to a challenging economy, we are taking a close look at our current business model with an eye to reducing jobs and costs that in our analysis do not directly contribute to selling more Nike product to more people." Yeah, we know, that would not be PC , but the challenging economy isn't exactly a secret.
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