Burger King Cuts Corporate Headcount To 6%; Antarctic Sea-Ice Extent Breaks Daily Record -- July 24, 2014

From Wiki: With an area of 70,762 square miles, North Dakota is the 19th largest state.

From IceAgeNow: Antarctic sea-ice extent breaks daily record by 65,000 sq miles.

The warmists predicted that Antarctic sea-ice would increase significantly. It was counter-intuitive but their proprietary GIGO models predicted this. At first the GIGO models did not predict this; warmists told us the melting polar ice would devastate the planet (The National Geographic even had a cover predicting the Statue of Liberty would be inundated), but then the warmists tweaked the GI and got new GO, predicting a much bigger Antarctic. I can't make this stuff up.

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Burger King Cuts Corporate Headcount To 6% Of Previous Workforce

This is an interesting data point:

Under the direction of 3G, Schwartz has helped reduce Burger King's corporate headcount from 38,884 to 2,425 by refranchising restaurants, meaning those workers now report to franchise owners. He has implemented deep cost-cutting measures that axed many executive perks, including lavish offices that employees called "Mahogany Row" and a $1 million annual party at a chateau in Italy.

Assuming that is not a typographical error, that seems impossible.  I must be missing something. It would be interesting to see a bit more detail. Although it seems to be simply a "restructuring" and no real loss in jobs, the article states that the new Burger King CEO cut the corporate headcount from almost 40,000 workers to less than 2,500 workers. Obviously all those folks did not simply go away; they are "reporting" to franchise owners now, not to the Burger King headquarters.

But let's say the article is accurate, that Burger King has cut its corporate workforce from 40,000 to 2,500 by simply restructuring. All of a sudden, Burger King is pushing ObamaCare costs to the franchise owners. One also wonders whether those 40,000 are all white collar workers earning big bucks or if many of them are hourly wage earners subject to minimum wage laws. If so, the CEO is anticipating a "$10.10 nation" and responding early.

I honestly don't know. But cutting "corporate headcount from 38,884 to 2,425 is a data point that can't help but catch one's attention.

By the way, there's another benefit of this restructuring. My hunch is that "franchise owners" will be much, much more sensitive to having folks on the payroll who do not provide any added value.

Individual franchise owners will start to do it their way.