Layoffs quietly begin at St. Paul Travelers (2200? jobs total)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8784671.htm

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ST. PAUL - The layoffs have quietly begun at St. Paul Travelers Cos.

Over the past few weeks, small groups of employees have been let go at the company's St. Paul headquarters, according to current and former workers interviewed by the Pioneer Press newspaper.

They say more than 40 technology employees were let go here this month, though no overall totals are known. It's not clear how many of the workers have been laid off, and how many have voluntarily left the company.

The merger of The St. Paul Cos. and Hartford, Conn.-based Travelers Property Casualty Corp. became official last month. The combined company's headquarters are in St. Paul but its largest business - commercial and property insurance - is run out of Connecticut.

Company officials say they don't know how many jobs will be eliminated as they integrate operations, but that they hope most of the reductions will be achieved through attrition.

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St. Paul Travelers already has identified $200 million in employee-related cost savings from the merger. That estimate would amount to 2,200 job cuts under a formula used by a financial analyst that equates one job for every $100,000 in cost savings. However, the formula excludes many variables such as job type.

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If we can't get beyond our racism to recognize that when we shake our heads in disgust over another story about a welfare queen, or a lazy-shifless black or Hispanic, a lot of us are talking about ourselves and our families. When we harangue about taxes going to help the undeserving, the poor, the elderly, the working poor, the mentally ill, the undereducated, many of us don't seem to count ourselves among that group. Even in my own family we hold that somehow we are in the "upper class to which the tax cuts and inheritance tax cuts apply. My brother-in-law who works two jobs just to stay in enough debt to make it by borrowing from me and skipping payments on some credit cards, takes great pleasure in supporting Bush and this war in Iraq because 'Bush is looking out for the working white man and won't take this shit from ignorant rag-heads who want us all to convert to Isalam and who want to control all the oil so they suck up our life-blood.' I just don't get it. My sister is just as bad. I feel sorry for her children who can't stand any 'foreigners in the neighborhood' (although all the foreigners in the neighborhood own all the stores, diners, and gasoline stations I know about.) My mom and dad did not think like this...where did they go wrong. I have one brother out 4 and one other sister who feel the way I do and see things differently. All of my siblings are high school graduates and all but one are college grads. My sister who is married to the "jerk" is a college grad. WTF happened to us?