Kodak's new business plan

Posted at: 08/14/2012 5:57 PM | Updated at: 08/14/2012 6:53 PM
By: Ray Levato | WHEC.com

Twenty five hours after the bankruptcy court deadline, News10NBC is still waiting to hear from Kodak about its patent sale. But a new business plan released by the company reveals just how small it has gotten in the last ten years. 

News10NBC has learned from reading Kodak’s new business plan that the company really has shrunk. Once there were 60,000 Kodak workers just in Rochester. Now there’s fewer than one third that in the whole company. 

Kodak's new business plan to emerge from bankruptcy shows it has cut 47,000 workers worldwide since 2003, from 64,000 thousand down to just 17,000. 

Bruce Leonard lost his job as manager of industrial camera design--how digital cameras look and feel. Kodak got out of the camera business earlier this year. 

Leonard said, “Right now I'm looking for either fulltime or part-time work and also enjoying retirement benefits because I was retirement eligible when I was separated from the company. But now that I'm out I kind of enjoy being retired and taking my time to look for another job. The good news of my group is that everyone who was reporting to me now has jobs six months later.” 

Peter Pecor is executive director of Rochester Works - where the unemployed go to look for jobs. 

Pecor said, “Any other area that would have had the number of people who were let go, or laid off over the years, would have been devastated. But I think this just proves that our area is resilient. You know there are many jobs out there today that we never saw before, especially in the health care field and technology field, social media, these are areas that did not exist before.” 

With a daughter off to college soon, Leonard had hoped to continue working at Kodak for at least another couple years. 

Leonard said, “Those of us who have left Kodak I think many of us have fond memories of Kodak. W would all like to see the company succeed not only for its financial health but ours also. My pension depends on their financial health. And I would love to see them climb out of this bankruptcy and be the company that they once were.”

Leonard will be 60 next week, but he says now that he’s out of Kodak, he kind of enjoys being retired and he’ll take his time to look for another job. Leonard says he got a severance package and was able to retire with a pension. He lives in Honeoye Falls and had 32 years with Kodak.

 

Have a story you want our news team to investigate? Call us at 585-232-1010, click here to send us an e-mail or leave us a Facebook post or tweet.

Print Story