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Clooney film comes to life as workers fired by video
Sussex electronics firm sacks 220 people by video in a scene straight out of ‘Up in the Air’
Anyone who has read the reviews of the George Clooney film Up in the Air knows that the Hollywood star plays a man who flies around America firing people. The writing is on the wall when a geeky young woman persuades Clooney's boss that it would save airline tickets and hotel bills if he stayed at the office in Omaha and did the deed by video.
It makes for a funny and thought-provoking movie and, as with many a good romcom, it doesn't really matter that the central premise is a little over the top.
Don't believe it: it has emerged that only last week, as the movie was about to open at cinemas, the bosses of a Sussex-based electronics company used a video message to tell 220 employees they were losing their jobs.
The Brighton Argus reported that workers at the Burgess Hill and Shoreham factories of the Edwards company were told in the video - deemed "tactless" by the Unite union - that manufacturing was being moved to South Korea and the Czech Republic.
In what could have been a scene straight from Up in the Air, the video focused more on the future of the company and less on the demise of its two Sussex factories. Said CEO Nigel Hunton: "These proposals are part of a range of measures that we intend will secure our long-term growth and profitability."
As anyone who seen Up in the Air will know, Clooney would have put is so much more delicately. But they still would have lost their jobs. ·
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It escapes me that "Corporations" move their operations out the country from which they grew and prospered, and instead impoverish those that were instrumental in their growth and returned most of their incomes gained from their endeavors in their communities... thereby perpetuating healthy economies... go figure, eh?