Obama's job-creation panel includes job-cutting executives

Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

October 9, 2011 ET

In an­oth­er public demonstration of concern about the struggling econ­o­my, Pres­ident Obama will meet in Pittsburgh on Tuesday with the busi­ness and la­bor leaders he has cho­sen to counsel him on job cre­ation.

But many of the chief exec­utives have cut American jobs and adopted tactics that weak­en orga­nized la­bor — even as their busi­nesses post record prof­its.

The exec­utives are members of the Pres­ident's Council on Jobs and Com­pet­itiveness, which Obama cre­ated in Jan­uary by ap­point­ing 26 leaders of compa­nies including American Ex­press, Comcast and In­tel. (A 27th member was added in June.)

      

When he cre­ated the council, which also includes two la­bor leaders, a biol­o­gist and an economist, Obama said its members would as­sist him to "do ev­ery­thing we can to spur hiring and en­sure our nation can com­pete with anybody on the plan­et."

Just days before the pres­ident ap­pointed Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief exec­utive of American Ex­press, to the council, the compa­ny an­nounced a massive re­struc­tur­ing that closed a fa­cility in North Car­olina and elim­inated 550 jobs, or about 1% of the compa­ny's workforce. At the same time, American Ex­press an­nounced it had made $1.1 billion in the fourth quar­ter of 2010, up 48% from the same pe­riod the pre­vi­ous year.

Xe­rox, whose chief exec­utive, Ursula Burns, sits on the board, has cut 4,500 jobs in the first six months of 2011.
      

Jim McNer­ney, chief exec­utive of Boe­ing, shrank the compa­ny's California op­erations because of the end of the space shut­tle program and defense cutbacks. In Jan­uary, Boe­ing said it was cutting 1,100 U.S. jobs, including 900 in Long Beach, and has since an­nounced fur­ther cuts in Al­abama and Kansas, while adding jobs elsewhere. At the same time, Boe­ing reported that prof­its rose 20%, to $941 billion in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2011.

Some compa­nies have been cutting jobs for years. East­man Kodak, whose chief exec­utive, Anto­nio M. Perez, is a member of the council, has completed a number of layoffs at its Rochester, N.Y., manufac­tur­ing fa­cilities. Be­tween 2004 and 2011, Kodak's Rochester workforce shrank by 9,200 to 7,100.

A handful of compa­nies with leaders who serve on the council have received govern­ment                 

funding for research and job cre­ation projects under the Obama admin­istration. General Electric, for example, received $210 million in stim­ulus funds, making it one of five compa­nies on the council that received a combined $610 million from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvest­ment Act, accord­ing to data posted on Recovery.gov, the govern­ment website that tracks stim­ulus dollars.