back to article IBM cuts more than 1,600 US jobs

IBMers from a number of different divisions of the IT giant say that the company initiated another round of "resource actions" on Monday, with somewhere north of 1,600 people estimated to have lost their jobs. The message board at Alliance@IBM, the local branch of the Communications Workers of America union headquartered in …

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  1. GreyWolf
    Boffin

    Translations

    I wonder what IBM has used as the euphemism his time. Could one of those affected please tell us?

    The one before mine was CTP, Career Transition Program - rapidly renamed Cash To Piss off.

    Mine was SRO, Skills Rebalancing Option - known as Smiling, Rich, and Out..

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    This one is BON....as in BON VOYAGE

    Except it stands for Bend Over Now.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    And yet

    they are still bringing in foreign workers (a colleague of mine is transferring from IBM in another country to IBM in the US)

    I feel sorry for my IBM colleagues in the USA... they continue to get shafted, while IBM continue to hire where I am.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    IBM Resource Action a.k.a. Oracle/Sun RIF

    IBM needs to move resources. A resource action is when one part of a business has too many headcount. There are tons of jobs at IBM and sometimes people need a little push to move to another in demand part of the business. It is also a lot easier to layoff very low performing people than try to fire them.

    Don't forget Oracle laid off 3,000 Sun employees on February 6th and regularly culls the bottom 10% of its sales force. The bastards let people go on Saturdays to cut unemployment costs.

    ....I am glad I don't work for Mr Lawrence Ellison aka. leisure suit Larry

    Get ready for the 15% price increase on SPARC systems.....its coming

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      @AC --- IBM Resource Action

      TPM --- an estimated 10,000 layoffs in 2009 and some 30,000 over the past four years

      AC --- IBM needs to move resources. A resource action is when one part of a business has too many headcount. There are tons of jobs at IBM and sometimes people need a little push to move to another in demand part of the business. It is also a lot easier to layoff very low performing people than try to fire them.

      30,000 over the past 4 years is a little high for very low performing people. Moving 10,000 people around to different jobs, in a single year, seems strange.

      If a company with as many people as IBM are moving between job 30,000 people or sacking 30,000 low performers, they are really screwed up.

      This is a very unrealistic view of IBM and the current global economy.

      AC --- Get ready for the 15% price increase on SPARC systems

      It would still be A LOT less expensive, per aggregate system performance metric, than the IBM Power hardware, since they have to re-train all those under-performers you are talking about!

      Cranking up the prices on one product line of an existing systems is an unrealistic view of Oracle/Sun.

      AC --- I am glad I don't work for Mr Lawrence Ellison

      Petty partisanship is a losing proposition in technology. IBM, Oracle, (and former Sun) were all all excellent companies - a realistic view of each of them is well understood by anyone who is employed in the industry.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    BON

    BON = Bangalore Own everythiNg (OK, that was poor, but can't think of any good words beginning with N)

    BON = Bangalore Outsourcing Never-ends.

    I for one welcome our new Indian overlords. Come 2012 when they own the entire world, I will look forward to using their call centres as the Mayan calendar ends causing the world to rip apart at the seams:

    "Thank you for calling the Apocalypse Hotline. Please press 1 if you are running from a tsunami. Press 2 for earthquakes. For vulcanism, please press 3. Or to speak to one of our operators for whom English is their 4th language, please stay on the line for approximately 53 minutes before getting disconnected as the call centre changes shift."

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    India?

    No doubt moving it all to India just like most big business. The US is ahead of the game on this but its quickly coming to the UK and to some extent Europe.

    Good to see the politicians doing something about it....

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ BON

    How about "BON = Bangalore Own 'Nothing'" There fixed that for you ;) They don't tend to own anything just work for low pay.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Terminator

      Thanks

      Yup, that seems to work, thanks AC :)

      A moderate sized piece of my Big Blue work has recently gone to India. No mention of layoffs here though.

      I don't recall the upper management jobs being outsourced. Surely they can make huge saving by outsourcing upper management and directors to either India or Poland? That would pave the way for bigger sales in those territories as the company would be run by locals.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Redundancy by Stealth on a Massive Scale

    This is Redundancy by Stealth on a massive scale - 2544 jobs according to the Alliance website now - and thank goodness for the Alliance for making this public. Why does the US Government allow large employers like IBM to make so many redundant but keep it under the radar?

    In the UK, the 'Redundancy by Stealth' programme from last year is still not complete, with 800+ employees being forced into early retirement without compensation. Why does the UK Government allow this coercion and intimidation? See the debate in the UK Parliament for details:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_8452000/8452051.stm

    with the transcript at:

    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100113/halltext/100113h0010.htm#10011364000002

    And now we have reports of further redundancies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

  9. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge
    Troll

    Where have all the corporatists gone?

    Aren't there usually a pile of corporatist Cult of the Quarterly Bonus types that come out of the woodwork on these threads? There’s usually at least one post about how it’s all a lie, the economy is great, there are plenty of jobs and some form of generic denouncement anyone talking about outsourcing/jobs/money/unions/etc. as lazy useless and suffering from a gross sense of entitlement

    Come on guys, you aren't keeping up your end of the internet trolling bargain! I was really looking forward to seeing precisely how you were going to be able to spin one of the bigger foreign labour importers (and H1B abusers) into a saint for axing jobs!

    This is a terrible disappointment.

  10. cmaurand

    They use lots of contractors

    IBM uses lots of temporary workers and contractors so they don't have to keep the employees on the books. Lots of folks being laid off will be brought back as contractors.

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