Thread regarding General Electric Co. layoffs

Many good replies here, but the bottom line is the working man will suffer, not the elitist country club executive creatures. It doesn't matter if you are GE or ex Alstom, the little folks will suffer and the corporate swamp creatures will go away rich! Drain the swamp! Immelt, Bornstein , Comstock, Booze and a whole list of others are self center pukes and should be investigated and pay the price! But no one goes after them? Why, because it's a country club, to them its like knowing your buddy at the cou try club cheats at golf or on his wife all the time and they never call him out!

Compared to the cost of Alstom and what we got, there is NO value. We lost big time. They cost GE their value. It is bringing to light the sh--show that GE was being held up by a bunch of OMLPs and worker drones. We've been trying to dump Alstom but are so screwed with the EU and French gov't we can't and no one is dumb enough to take them off our hands. Im telling you, it will be the Chinese for pennies on the dollar, or more likely - we will pay the Chinese to take them. By then, the American workers will be gone though. Culp knows how screwed we are and will just be aggressive in cutting costs before he cashes out with his $300M. What do you think a Trojan Horse from Trian will do? Definitely not something for the good of the company. What cracks me up is all the people that wait around watching the ship sink... you're on it.

Finally Larry said it yesterday...the write down and failures of power are all linked to Alstom. Knowing their lowly status in this company, why do they stay?

With Alstom, the French screwed the Americans. It does not happen so often. French government could protect jobs for a while and even increase them in France. Got some money from the deal. Kept the transportation unit in France and allowed the sale of a business in a sector (fossil fuels) which everybody knows will shrink. I will never forget the smiling faces of JI and JF leaving the Elysee palace after meeting with the French President. This one was probably laughing out loud. Stop blaming Alstom and the French workers. It was GE that bought Alstom. It was the American elite of GE who got screwed by a bunch of old style and socialism-lovers Frenchy.

@VS4GxOv-ucj Spot on summary of the challenges facing Power. Any way you look at it, Alstom was a mistake and being made worse by the partial integration. The result is a confused organization structure and ongoing distractions trying to figure out who can make decisions and how we work with what amounts to 2 processes.

Alstom had great process rigor in Engineering but played in low margin markets. GE bought them with a hope that they can improve margins by applying GE magic and having 3 major suppliers instead of four.

First, Alstom order book and costs were worse than what was presented to JRI who didn't want naysayers around him.

Second, there is no magic GE formula to improve margins. They broke up Alstom six different ways to create more layers for the bloated ruling class.

Third, market tanked. All signs were there but CEO didn't want to believe the naysayers. He was too busy dreaming about becomy a SW company to really understand the market. CEO of power was focused on his next job, not the market risks.

Last, the two companies never finished integration - us vs them remains to this day is worse everyday there are layoffs or threats of one.

Top 3 layers of leadership are gone but eight layers of bureaucracy remains.

Thanks JI, hope you’re enjoying that $300M package.

people tend to have a bad memory - the idea behind the Alstom purchase was based on the income to be earned from Alstom installed fleet and the service opportunities in addition to reducing possible tax losses from the money GE had "parked" in Europe at the time.

A nice little additional benefit from the purchase of Alstom was to remove one of the competitors from the table.

The ONLY GT that GE now actively acknowledges from the Asltom legacy is the GT13E2.

The GT24 (US market machine) is gone, Ansaldo only received the European GT26 (and GT36 which was almost finished).

Say what you wish - the Alstom Legacy fleet still provides a high margin cash flow, despite the market slump, one less competitor has certainly improved GE's position.

Get rid of the Alstom workers as you wish, you still need the legacy service, only keep the GT13E2 knowledge base and it should still be viewed as a successful takeover from GE's point of view - based on the points I have already raised.

If anyone should feel angry, it should be the Alstom guys who have been raped and plundered by the GE corporate sharks, and perhaps also the legacy Alstom customers who are faced with a totally different service business model.

just my 2cents.

Don’t forget alstom was heavily invested in fossil steam technology and nuclear. We all know how popular that technology is in the more mature markets. Although, Asia will still embrace this source of energy.

The head count Alstom carrier was darn high. I recall Alstom staffing up ~ 25 % during the merger years it to took GE to absorb the Alstom company. GE should have walked from the deal and let Alstom go bankrupt again. The French government would have been left with that bag again. No way you look at it heads need to be reduced in Power someplace.