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Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

nytimes.com

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Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#81

Post by dpc59 »

omouse wrote: post #62
ConfuciusSay02 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't happen, because the Quebec government will not allow it.

Because canadians are risk-averse. Hence why only the banks have been continuing to make money; they even invest in each other to keep the risk-averse cycle going.

The canadians who want to invest in risky industries have more incentives to do so south of the border. Most of our population is within 100km of the american border, and it's pretty fucking easy to get a visa if you're about to invest money in the US.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#82

Post by dpc59 »

ConfuciusSay02 wrote: post #76
omouse wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because canadians are risk-averse. Hence why only the banks have been continuing to make money; they even invest in each other to keep the risk-averse cycle going.

It's also due to, in the case of the Quebec government, nationalistic sentiment. It's a difficult balance to strike - keeping and supporting high tech manufacturing, while trying to remain competitive. I think at the moment, the government intervention (blocking suitors and direct investment) is in fact doing more harm than good, but perhaps they know better - I have no knowledge of how competitive the C-Series reall…

The liberal party of Québec isn't very nationalistic, it's mostly that they have very deep ties to the Beaudoin family that has inherited Bombardier from their parents without having the competency to manage it. And our government is in the hand of corporations since we still have colonial institutions, so they spend our tax dollars on free loans that will never be paid back.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#83

Post by Johnny555 »

gaur wrote: post #33

There are hundreds of millions of people in North America. Why do people act like gaining or losing a couple thousand jobs is some kind of earth-shaking development? I get that losing jobs sucks for the people involved, but sometimes I even see US jobs reports delivered as breaking news in national newspapers. Why?

First, 7,500 is more than "a couple thousand", but even a couple thousand jobs has more impact than just the direct impact of "just a couple thousand jobs" -- unemployed people buy a lot less products and services than employed people - and they often need public assistance, so the public burden is even higher - loss of income tax plus welfare payments.

And while many of them will eventually get new jobs, it's going to take some retraining (not a whole lot of demand for train engineers these days), and time.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#84

Post by tjr »

douche wrote: post #4

Bombardier is a weird company. It's one of those huge conglomerations that is in multiple lines of business, like some of the Japanese consortiums. This article mentions their aerospace and rail lines, which I wasn't even aware of; their more visible business, as far as I know, is in ATVs, snowmobiles, and jetskis.

I've worked with people in their aerospace division on several occasions. I honestly didn't know they did anything besides aerospace... :-/

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#85

Post by cerved »

gaur wrote: post #33

There are hundreds of millions of people in North America. Why do people act like gaining or losing a couple thousand jobs is some kind of earth-shaking development? I get that losing jobs sucks for the people involved, but sometimes I even see US jobs reports delivered as breaking news in national newspapers. Why?

Because a Fortune Global 500 high-tech company doesn't lay-off 10% of it's workforce very often. When they do it signals an underlying weakness in either the company, sector or economy and is thus newsworthy.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#86

Post by xenadu02 »

tormeh wrote: post #46
gok wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is inconsistent at all. They're laying off mostly people in their rail division, which is based in Germany and doing poorly. They're asking for some government support for the aerospace group, which is based in Canada and doing ok, but facing lots of competition from Airbus and Embraer, which also receive government support.

I wonder why governments subsidize production of commercial airliners so much. There are no network effects or lock-in, so there is nothing to milk after you've gotten big, just more need for subsidies. And jet fighters etc. are usually made by different manufacturers altogether, except for military freighters.

There is no Minimal Viable Product for commercial airliners. Either they fly with as close to 100% reliability as possible or almost no one will buy them. The cost to an airline of even a single crash is way more than they could ever hope to save by buying from some unknown maker. It's also a massively capital-intensive business.

It isn't impossible that new competitors will emerge but it will be a long difficult road.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#87

Post by yongjik »

wott wrote: post #34
doobiedowner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done neither, but I have peed myself on a Bombardier made prop plane flying in turbulence.

So now you have a goal in life: to try it on a snowmobile.

...Peeing in a Bombardier snowmobile flying in turbulence?

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#88

Post by ovrdrv3 »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #12

I initially thought that the number of bombardier jobs (as in, the guy who drops bombs from a plane) was being reduced by 7500. I was shocked there were that many.

Hey, that's better than my initial reaction, I thought the title was talking about Ruby on Rails developers

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

xenadu02 wrote: post #86
tormeh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why governments subsidize production of commercial airliners so much. There are no network effects or lock-in, so there is nothing to milk after you've gotten big, just more need for subsidies. And jet fighters etc. are usually made by different manufacturers altogether, except for military freighters.

There is no Minimal Viable Product for commercial airliners. Either they fly with as close to 100% reliability as possible or almost no one will buy them. The cost to an airline of even a single crash is way more than they could ever hope to save by buying from some unknown maker. It's also a massively capital-intensive business. It isn't impossible that new competitors will emerge but it will be a long difficult roa…

There's not an MVP for a superjumbo, but you could start with UAVs, small planes, and start scaling up.

The design challenges (and off-the-shelf parts) for smaller aircraft are more viable.

Alternatively, you could start by building subsystems and expand to full aircraft.

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