Against the backdrop of an uneven economic recovery, these restructuring initiatives are designed to make American Express more nimble, more efficient and more effective in using our resources to drive growth, Chenault said in the statement.
greedy fucks, why not keep them employed, just a drop in the bucket to keep them employed with the profits they make.
Is that some kind of troll? This is an economically destructive attitude. Why pay people to do redundant work when those resources could be spent better elsewhere?
It might be good for the company, and in principal, it seems sound, but finding new work is generally a resource-consuming process itself (not just for the worker himself, but the economy as a whole as consumption possibly drops). Overall, it may be an economically destructive action to "give up" on employees rather than trying to "salvage" them (whether that means keeping them on-board assuming they'll be profit-makers later, or repurposing them to work in a similar role). Not taking a side either way, but it'd be interesting to read studies on the true impact of letting employees go.
The retrenched workers will find work in other areas of the economy where they will actually be paid to do productive work.
Keeping the unproductive people employed is just a lose-lose proposition. The company suffers and produces less goods/services and the potential productivity of the worker is wasted. You say this is greedy and you might be right, but society is much better off for this. The alternative is that everyone suffers; prices go up for everyone.
If the recovery is "uneven", it's because the government is intervening in the allocation of capital, such as enforcing the very policy suggested (interfering with the terms of employment). Jobs can't go where they're needed and the economy doesn't seem to recover... huh!