Sorry, but that hardly makes sense…you might as well say management must be able to see the future.

Arguably they can't have ignored that a surge this big would be temporary... It's not like we suddenly discovered a massive amount of resources at our disposal to produce the goods they are transporting.

EDIT: It's frankly amazing to see how much has been projected onto my comment. For the sake of transparency towards the neoliberal police, I quoted what was obviously the only phrase I was answering to.

We need dynamic, responsive economies that can adapt to conditions, and we need strong protections for worker's rights and support for citizens through economic adjustments. These are not contradictory goals. A stronger more adaptive economy is better able to afford the costs of effectively managing such adaptations.

I don't think anyone unconditionally owes me a job. I don't have an unconditional claim on other people's money just because they paid me in the past. I'm owed fair compensation for my work, and reasonable notice and compensation if I'm let go, which has happened.

It's not reasonable, and is seriously inefficient, to compel private companies to be government work programmes. The result is companies won't hire when they need more workers in case they get stuck with them, harming the company, workers, tax payers from reduced revenue, and the economy in general.

No, I only answered to the previous commenter who wrote that management can't predict the future. They knew it was coming, and increasing temporarily the headcount was their plan.

I don't like job cuts neither, but shipping is directly linked to the global economy. And if we go into a slow down, shipping demand slows down as well. Head count at Maersk is directly linked to that demand, so there are only so many options on the table.

Shipping goes through these cycles on a regular basis, not adjusting would put all jobs at risk. The real tragedy is, that a signifocant chink of those affected are under paid crew members and blue collar workers from countries without social security nets, whose families depend on their pay checks. And working on a Maersk vessel easily beats the quasi slavery on some fishing vessels by light years.

Where did I write that, exactly?

I see no evidence for this. Business was booming by the end of 2021 and headcount increases realised in 2022 would have started the year before, which was before the invasion of Ukraine.

In any case a 10% drop in had count is not all that much. That's the level of head count churn most companies go through in a year anyway. The majority of this was probably satisfied by early retirement and voluntary redundancies. In Europe in most circumstances you're required to go through that process first. This whole furore is a storm in a teacup inspired by profound misunderstanding of how economies and companies actually function in the real world.

And also the plan of the workers. It is not like they didn't also know what was coming when they took the job.

They're in my contract, and protected under UK employment law.

>You don't really seem like someone who needs to work for a living, but you're trying to portray yourself as labor and not capital in your posts.

You're hallucinating.

>Or you are against your own self-interests, which is illogical.

What are our interests? I have interests as an employee, but I also have interests as a customer of other companies, as a tax payer, and as a citizen generally.

A lot of the products I buy here in the UK, or inputs to them are probably transported by Maersk. I have an interest in Maersk being a well run efficient company that does a good job cheaply and reliably transporting those goods. If they have insufficient employees or investment, that jeopardises supply. If they have increased costs, that makes the goods I depend on more expensive.

It's in my interests that companies I buy products and services from are efficient and are not burdened with unnecessary costs. Also if they see an increase in demand, that they can respond to that without worrying about being locked into near-permanent employment contracts. I even have that interest as an employee, because if my company becomes ossified employing people that are under-utilised that saps their ability to invest, grow, compensate me better, or even for the company to survive.

It's also in my interests as tax payer that there is an affordable social safety net, but as an employee that there is an adequate one. Both factors are important to me.

They could have paid by having less profit. Instead employees are paying by losing their jobs.

This would have been a totally different discussion if they were making a loss. If you ask me a good business keeps a safety net when times a good and uses their safety net when times are bad. Only when those savings run out they should consider letting people go.

Even beyond the business itself, profits mater. They are the surplus a business generates that gets plowed back into the economy outside the business. That money gets invested in other businesses, spent on other goods and activities. It's the fuel that goes into other beneficial economic activities.

Leaving it sunk in an unproductive business that's paying people to do less, and generating fewer outputs is a tax on the whole rest of the economy. It's invisible because it's investment and spending that never happens, but it's a real effect. It's true that those unproductive workers still get paid and that money goes into the economy, but if they were working in another job at a productive company or retraining, that's a net gain. That's can't happen if they're stuck in an unproductive job.

>If you ask me a good business keeps a safety net when times a good and uses their safety net when times are bad.

Any good business does this, but they need to take acton on foreseeable headwinds in order to maintain that safety net against unforeseeable ones. When it looks like times are uncertain and getting worse, possibly in unpredictable ways, is not time to give up your safety net. That's how businesses fail and the whole company goes under. How does that benefit anyone?

If that means during Christmas your checkout line takes longer so be it. I also want a job year round, why wouldn’t someone else deserves that?

This is not a conversation about amount of work vs number of people. Its amount of work vs pay.

If there really is only work to do 2 months out of the year, then they should pay 600% of a regular monthly salary.

Sounds like your last sentence also agrees that businesses should be able to increase number of employees and decrease number of employees.

Arguably workers should wake up and accept that jobs are not permanent or guaranteed.

Or is that decreased demand for this company only?

There are plenty of people who simply can't afford to stay at a company when their pay is being cut by 10% or more. They need pretty much all of their salary to pay bills. Taking such a pay cut is only an option for the higher incomes, where there is some jiggle room due to significant discretionary income.

Think of it this way: if Maersk didn't expand headcount just so that they could avoid layoffs later, then people wouldn't have had jobs in 2022. Consider * 5,000 people working in year X and in X+1. * 10,000 people working in year X and 5,000 people working in year X+1

Which was the better situation for workers and society at large?

Companies hire workers when the need them and let them go when they don't. Just like workers take jobs when they need the pay and quit when they don't.

If management did not hire more people when they needed more workers it is bad for the company and also bad for the workers who could have been hired and earning those wages when there was increased demand.

Not every company can afford ridiculous salaries and headcounts until the next VC funding round comes through.

Now there's 2 parts of management. There's accounting, processing orders, filling out whatever government forms need filling out, keeping up to date with new regulations, ... Sometimes this is called accounting, but generally it's called management. They're not who we mean.

But then there's management, like the C-suite. Who "set direction". Their ONLY job, like shareholders, is to predict the future. That's literally their only function.

So yes, firing them because they misjudged required headcount doesn't sound even a little bit unreasonable.

Unless of course, and I didn't check, Maersks bets on air freight, warehousing and fulfillment didn't oay off. In ehich case the C suite set a wrong strategy.