Thread regarding 3M layoffs

I don't believe it is so much about fear of a recession as much as it is about fear of litigation costs, sales declines in established areas and the unknown of future growth expectations. Perhaps some policy concerns play into some of it too. Overall, I think the idea behind the cuts is to get more and more roles aligned to the cheapest labor (GSCs and AI) teams through attrition, and ultimately cuts if the attrition doesn't happen quick enough.

And its working!! Fear has made those serious about working return to the office. This strategy is working or dare i say… winning!

When they realized employees did not want to go back to the office and work from home...it was all they needed to layoff and source the jobs elsewhere. Saves on wages, facilities and perks. They were just waiting for that!

The fat is beyond ridiculous. A supervisor for every 10 people and a senior supervisor for every 6 or so supervisors, not to mention leads on crews that actually engage with production basically handle all shift issues.
The supervision teams are rarely seen or are sought after only when time , payroll, or vacation requests are needed. But when you are executing the good ol boys system and these individuals are placed in these roles with zero knowledge this is the multiple layer fat we have that have cost hands on people their jobs and livelihoods. How many unseen supervisors , sr supervisors are actually needed to make a productive environment?
Especially with current environment less people pulling double duty due to less manpower but somehow same supervison headcount. Make it make sense

Right. The amount of work our leads do is definitely more than 3:1 job role and then you question why there's supes, senior supes, directors and handful of managers on top of managers. You don't need a dozen bosses. We have trainers who don't train and production workers take that role. Too many stupid positions on payroll imo that could be removed. 3m just got stupid with their spending. The amount of free work we give for sc--w ups and cost of late work because we don't have any local suppliers just boggles your mind how this place runs.

3M Execs have been panicking about an impending recession since 2015. Guess what, apart from Covid impact there hasn't been one. The number of gross foul-ups they make on the macroeconomic picture is just another of their many, many disqualifying flaws.

Take the US as the lead economy in the world and still half of 3M's sales.

• Unemployment 3.4% (very, very low historically)
• GDP growth 5.9% in 2021 (Covid bounce back) Long term holding a ~3%.

These are not signs of an impending recession. These are signs of a mostly healthy economy that bounced back from Covid better than anyone had a right to expect. Any other reading of the data is simply not honest.

The big tech companies (Meta, Google, etc.) were arguably over-staffed and they are cutting back.

3M is by any reasonable metric way under-staffed. How many of us know 3Mers having to do jobs that should be done 2, 3, or even 4 people? I see plants trying to run 24x7 on 3-crew. I see division scientists spending half their time being shipping clerks because we fired all the dock workers. I see plants having to share a plant manager with another plant a thousand miles away. I see Tireman firing Mfg. Technology, a group that should have been doubled in size, not halved.

Long rant, I know, but seeing such gross fu-kups from people who should know better is just saddening and maddening.

There were rumors last summer that 3M wanted to trim down to below 70k employees before (not after) the healthcare spin-off. Rumors aren't always reality, but the company does seem to be inching closer to that number. It was about being as streamlined as possible so they had more room to maneuver with the lawsuits. For those who are still at 3M and have managers saying that the cuts are finished, please don't take it as a guarantee. 3M may use recession fears as an excuse to cut down to that 70k size.

And in other nothing burger news…

I think this an incredibly optimistic and unfounded take on the lay-offs. I dont think the execs are thinking that far ahead or have any sort of real plan..

Please. How many layoffs over how many years? But this one is "preemptive" in advance of a recession? Recessions happen every few years; some deeper than others. Ask if it's really a factor or an excuse.

Agree with the previous Poster. These shadow role became more of reporter roles, consolidating data from each sites. Tireman probably saw this redundancy and decided to trim it off. There goes the LVS, MTE etc

I would say A3M is one of the key reason for over hiring and over promoting. Now that Consultant found out that these are usually “shadow” roles. This is undoing what was added to A3M structure

The real reason is that they are too proud to cut the dividend. 3M currently spends $830M per quarter paying a dividend (assuming everyone elected to take it in cash - many reinvest). The latest restructuring actions are estimated to cost $700 to $900M. Taking that severance hit saves a quarter's worth of dividends. 3M cannot afford the dividend long term, but they'll wait to be under the cover of spinco reorganization before slashing the dividend. Today is a great day to sell your 3M stock.

They over hired for covid like every other company. They over promoted unqualified employees into unnecessary high paying positions. They have billions in lawsuits coming which is going to push bankruptcy. It's that simple. Is a recession coming? Probably but the layoffs were most likely the other reasons.

If only they were that smart

They have no clue what they are doing but try to prop up margins

You give them too much credit that they might be thinking ahead of next quarter.

The executive leadership doesn’t appear to know what made 3M great. Margins are down from what they promised Wall Street but 3M is still very profitable, for now.

The issue is that growth is dead. MTE, LVS and corporate lab cuts mean less new products or technologies that differentiate.

Think about what good growth was for 3M, 5-8% yearly? How many years of that do we need to get the stock price back up? And that’s if we had a strong R&D budget, much less now that tiremans consulting firms ki-led 3M innovation.

Tireman wants to cut redundancy, isn’t he redundant since he just hires consultants to give him strategy? Maybe the Bobs need to ask him “what exactly would you say you do here?”