Engineers, factory, service support people are what contribute to making money. Paper pushers (a necessary evil) are the drag on those profits and that includes middle managers. That's were you look at cutting costs. Also older workers are usually make more for doing that same work it makes sense to get rid of them first before they build up a lot of pension benefits. That works the same in other industries such as computer gaming companies etc. especially the newer start ups as opposed the bigger older ones like Microsoft and the like.