In August of 2007 the Star Tribune reported General Mills decision to decide to cut the production of their frozen waffle industry. Sales had plummeted from $63 million to under $23 million in just one year with most of the money coming from Pillsbury’s frozen foods.
“The drop came in a relatively flat industry. Frozen-waffle sales have grown by just $10 million since 2003, but the $521 million in annual sales, for the most recent 52-week period, is dominated by Kellogg, General Mills' archrival and owner of the Eggo brand. Kellogg holds a 71 percent market share in frozen waffles.”
They ended up laying off over 100 employees in the factories and had to take away lots of assets.
The article then goes on to describe other layoffs that had happened in the recent past which added up to a little over 500 employees nationwide.
"It's not a fit with our long-term strategy and our overall portfolio," said Tom Forsythe, a company spokesperson.
This information does not really look the best for my company, however it is something that happens in every company and let their employees go over a longer period of time than most would wait so that they could find another place to work.
This article is definitely another side to my company by showing the downside of what can happen when companies get to competitive with each other and in the process end up becoming too confident to the point where they hire to many people along with promoting and producing a product that is not going to sell as much as it will end up costing.
I think that General Mills took a big risk in pushing a product so much that was already so heavily dominated by its competitor and it ended up in a bad situation for all parties involved.
I think that this shows that no matter how ethical a company is they all still have their faults. Whether this was just an oversight or the company trying to get too greedy we will probably never know, but it is good that you have found both sides of the ethical argument for your company. All companies go through rough times, but it seems like your company is really not doing so well. It will be interesting to see whether or not they keep being ethical even when sales are down and money is not rolling in. I just do not understand how their sales could go down so far so quickly even if we are in an economic recession I would not expect to see such drastic results so quickly. As for the layoffs they are going on everywhere it is sad but true no matter how ethical a company is when hard times come it is usually the workers who get the short end of the stick.
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