Business

Loser.
by Barbie Kunkelova

About a sixth of Chrysler's North American workforce will be unemployed over 2007 and 2008. Tens of thousands of employees have been dismissed already. Due to sluggish sales and nonprofitable business. Chrysler has been struggling with nonprofitability since the price of gas went up and the Americans started turning away from purchasing big cars; the trend of minivans, trucks and sport utility vehicles was over. GM, Ford and Chrysler shared 74% of car sales in the US in 1997, now it is 57%, according to AutoBlog. Not even the merger with Daimler in 1998 helped Chrysler. It kept losing while Daimler succeeded; now Daimler is selling Chrysler off to American investors. A never-ending chain of strategically wrong decisions is not the best of perspectives one is looking for in a partner. Already in years 2001 and 2003 Chrysler reported losses of 5.8 billion euros. Plus the total losses from 2006 ($1.48 billion) add up to over 6.9 billion euros and they're yet expected to grow. Due to this there was money missing to improve quality, produce environmentally friendlier vehicles and safeguard jobs. The managers kept producing high, even though sales stalled. They never innovated. The company's CEO, Dieter Zetsche, reacted too late; he announced only this spring that they will examine their options. Since then, a new Chairman of the Board of Management and a President in one person was named & Jim Press. Under his ruling the company is focusing on a new approach and survived even the summer when the profits dropped by 19%. Two new models are being prepared for 2008. The massive job cuts are only a part of a restructuring plan. There are really only two things to do: build innovated strong cars and then wait for the public to notice. And jobs will be saved.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_on_bi_ge/chrysler_job_cuts;_ylt=AqWDY6zgI0qLsbw.1ryVvwWs0NUE

by Barbie Kunkelova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 5:36 PM