Automaker

Fiat cuts work force

Plagued by strikes, slumping sales and a sinking stock price, ailing automaker Fiat said Wednesday it would lay off 7,600 workers.

Fiat Auto’s decision to cut 20 percent of its domestic work force, coupled with the recent announcement of 3,000 temporary layoffs, was the latest attempt to keep Italy’s largest private-sector employer afloat and improve prospects for its sale to General Motors or another company.

Agriculture

Farmland donates plant to Minnesota community

Farmland Industries lawyers told a bankruptcy judge that the company does not intend to rebuild a fire-damaged pork processing plant in Albert Lea, Minn.

Instead, the company will clear away debris from the plant and turn the property over to the town of Albert Lea, the lawyers said during a bankruptcy hearing this week in Kansas City, Mo.

In exchange for the property, Albert Lea officials have agreed not to ask for more money from Farmland for any further work it determines the property needs to make it ready for development, said Laurence Frazen, Farmland’s lead bankruptcy attorney.

Farmland owns a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Lawrence that has been shut down since May 2001.

Sporting goods

Bass Pro Shops stalls Kansas City retail plans

Bass Pro Shops continues to expand, but the outdoor sports supplier’s plans for a store in Kansas City, Mo., are on indefinite hold.

It remains unable to secure a site in Kansas City, after plans to anchor a restored Bannister Mall with a 160,000-square-foot store fell through.

The Kansas City store was to go in a site now occupied by the May Co.’s Jones Store. Jones was to move into another site a former J.C. Penney store in the renovated mall, but St. Louis-based May now says it’s not moving.

Pharmaceutical

Abbott cuts 2,000 jobs

Pharmaceuticals giant Abbott Laboratories Inc. said Wednesday that it planned to cut 2,000 jobs, or 3 percent of its worldwide work force.

The firm announced the plan even as it reported a 14 percent profit increase for the third quarter. Abbott said it was restructuring its manufacturing, international and diagnostics divisions to save $80 million to $100 million.

The company employs 70,000 people around the world. Details on where the cuts would be made were not immediately provided.