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Staff cuts at IBM alarm union
COMPUTER COMPANY IBM, which has been a little smaller ever since flogging its PC client hardware line, keeps 'rebalancing' its workforce with selective staffing cuts.
AllianceIBM, which represents some employees, said that Biggish Blue has fired more than 1,700 workers, mostly in the US, and that the number of jobs lost might rise.
AllianceIBM's national director, Lee Conrad said the cuts this week occurred around the country and across several divisions. AllianceIBM is linked to the Communications Workers of America and is seeking union recognition at IBM.
The company still employs a lot of people, though, as the cuts represent less than one per cent of IBM's workforce of 399,409 as of December 31. IBM does not announce job cuts so usually the press never reports it. Most of the reorganization costs at Big Blue this year will be in Europe and Asia, apparently.
We already labelled IBM Biggish Blue after previous rounds of downsizing in the last decade, so if what the union is saying is true, we might eventually have to relabel it Not-so-Big Blue. µ
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I used to work in their Global Business Services division doing consulting.
Before I departed they were laying people off right and left and offshoring those jobs to India.
Remember, they're not layoffs, they're "Resource Actions" :) And India is a "Global Delivery Center" ..heh.
It was a horrible experience working as a mindless minion. Thank goodness I got out!
Why not call IBM now little Pale Blue?
If IBM moved exclusively to Intel CPUs then IBM would become the next Dell. At that point you could kiss half of IBM goodbye.
Perhaps they are just making room for "Unix-owner" Novell? Then they (and their buddy, Google) could shut down that Unix-using pest Apple (a picture of a stuffed Jobs with an apple crammed into his mouth comes to mind...).
They does not discontinue PowerPC development. If IBM use Intel products exclusively, this staff cuts will not be happened. I wish IBM will discontinue its multi billion dollar research in Power processors and semiconductor process, so I believe IBM will appraise its shareholder with big ney income and declare big divident each quarter.
I've been through one of IBM's layoffs and it is not pretty. I came to work one day and there were only 4 out of 25 of us in our staff meeting. IBM gives no notice. The IBM victim goes home and is called at home that evening and told they are terminated. The victim is not even permitted to clean out their desk. The only warning comes from an email which declared an audit, and requests all account user name and passwords. IBM may be even worse than HP in how unethical they treat employees.