5 ms·

"job losses" is BBC editorializing. They do not use that term in their letter: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workforce-reduction https://

• xnorswap 11mo ago
  Indeed, Amazon use the euphemism, "making organizational changes".
  • sgt 11mo ago
    And by applying these organizational changes, each person can become more load bearing and have so much more scope and impact. This is not a loss, it's a great win for everyone! /s
  • jalapenos 11mo ago
    Makes it sound like they shuffled desks and gave everyone new team names. How fun! (Not like, you know, some people getting divorced soon, some people biting a revolver soon)
  • mc32 11mo ago
    It’s equivalent to “restructuring” which doesn’t directly mean reduction in force but it does mean that I directly.
• darrenf 11mo ago
  I sincerely suspect the BBC would only ever use "fired"/"firings" if the employees were being dismissed for conduct reasons, since that's the common usage in British English. I've been let go -- indeed, I've lost my job (it's the employees who suffer job losses, not the employer) -- but I've never been fired.
  • acatnamedjoe 11mo ago
    "Firing" is becoming a bit more common in Britain, but still sounds like an Americanism to my British ears. I would use "sacking" for performance related termination, and "losing ones job" in all other cases. I suspect BBC would use the same.
    • cjrp 11mo ago
      "Made redundant" is another term for the latter.
      • ghaff 11mo ago
        Which, at least in American English, comes across like corporate jargon/weasel words. Lost their job is literally true and would probably take a bunch more words to describe the precise reasons.
        • darrenf 11mo ago
          Both things can be literally true. I've lost my job by being made redundant, twice. In Britain redundancy is a very specific thing, where your role no longer exists and you must be let go in a fair way according to employment law. It's quite the opposite of jargon or weasel words here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights
      • hackeraccount 11mo ago
        Synergized is the term I typically hear.
• antifacistpleb 11mo ago
  [dead]
• pjc50 11mo ago
  I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process. People like to make too much out of active/passive word choices. Granted it can get very propagandistic ("officer-involved shooting"), but if you try to make people say "unhoused" instead of "homeless" everyone just back-translates it in their head.
  • nsxwolf 11mo ago
    I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”. “Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.
    • pseudalopex 11mo ago
      Fired means terminated for any reason to many Americans. And academics, economists, and lawyers avoid it in my experience.
  • iamacyborg 11mo ago
    > Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process. This is only true when an employee has worked for a company for 2 or more years
  • thaumasiotes 11mo ago
    > in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy" OK. I was fired for no stated cause in a process that didn't involve headcount reduction, or the firing of anyone except me specifically. (The unstated cause seems to have been that I had been offered a perk by the manager who hired me that the new manager didn't want to honor after the original guy was promoted.) How would you describe that, in British English?