Posted on 03/25/2009 10:28:23 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
IBM Set to Cut More U.S. Jobs
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
International Business Machines Corp. is expected to inform a large number of U.S. employees in its global-business services unit that their jobs are being eliminated, with the work of many of them being transferred to IBM employees in India, according to people familiar with the situation.
The planned cuts show that even companies that are successfully navigating the global recession are continuing to slash costs--some of them by taking advantage of cheaper Asian labor.
IBM reported $4.42 billion in fourth-quarter earnings, a 12% gain. It has forecast profit growth this year, and is discussing a takeover of rival Sun Microsystems Corp. for $6.5 billion to $8 billion, say people familiar with the talks.
Among other companies that are profitable, Microsoft Corp. announced plans for 5,000 layoffs earlier this year and Caterpillar Inc. said it was cutting 5,000 white collar jobs by the end of this month in the wake of a fourth-quarter earnings decline.
It couldn't be determined how many people are losing their jobs in the IBM action. IBM typically avoids public disclosure of layoffs, and a spokesman declined comment on the plan.
IBM managers have been receiving training from human-resources specialists on handling the layoffs, according to one manager involved in the process. Earlier this year, IBM sent notices of layoffs--often characterized internally as "resource actions"--to around 4,600 employees in its software, sales, semiconductor and finance groups, documents sent to employees in those departments show.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Rank and File Democrats must understand why leftwingers who run their party is so happy the economy is being destroyed.
That is the only way we have a chance to stop them in any kind of ‘election’.
Let IBM die with their "Better Planet" cr@p. Let them die with their ads that push new taxes like "congestion pricing." Ooooooh. It reduces "emissions." Well so would banning driving altogether. Businesses that advocate higher taxes deserve the death they will realize.
ML/NJ
Boy that obama stimulus package sure is working isn’t it.
Sun jobs?
In fairness, IBM is moving 1300 jobs to a new Service Deliver Center in Dubuque Iowa, which were originally planned to go to India. Sarlary range is $40K, and they’re re-habbing a large downtown property too.
I'm waiting for the mass exodus of business from the US.
Not to worry. Our President will fix it when he takes over management of the company.
I wish they’d start with this crap.... Maybe IBM’s VP of Diversity can find a job in the Obama admin.
IBM labels diversity a ‘strategic imperative’
By VIRGINIA GALT From Monday’s Globe and Mail
Toronto —
Fishing is more fun, says IBM’s “dean of diversity,” but golf is the game of business — which is why, he explains, Big Blue has installed putting greens at some of its on-site day-care centres.
Little girls should learn to play golf so they will not grow up to be “competitively disadvantaged,” Ted Childs, global vice-president of work force diversity at International Business Machines Corp., said during a recent visit to the company’s Canadian headquarters.
Their mothers are getting golf lessons, too, as IBM drives its diversity initiative in a range of new directions as part of a sweeping corporate strategy aimed at increasing IBM’s appeal in the marketplace.
Right down to the games children play at the day-care centres, Mr. Childs is presiding over a cultural evolution at IBM — a company that was very white, very male and very strait-laced when he joined as an affirmative-action hire in the United States 35 years ago.
He was in Toronto earlier this month to address IBM Canada Ltd.’s women-in-leadership group and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered group. It’s “pride month” and a contingent from IBM will be marching in Toronto’s annual gay pride parade at the end of June.
IBM should be a place where people feel comfortable being openly gay and where women and people from minority group backgrounds have equal opportunity for promotion and advancement, said Mr. Childs, who is black. And anyone who has a problem with that need not apply at IBM, he added.
This is driven as much by market realities as it is by a desire to do the right thing, Mr. Childs said in an interview between meetings. IBM’s effort to diversify the work force “has moved from being a moral imperative to being a strategic imperative.”
IBM does business in 164 countries, it has operations in 73 countries and, even in its home base of the United States, there are now more than 83 million people from visible minority backgrounds. “This is a larger group than the individual country populations of Canada, Spain, France, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Italy,
Egypt, South Africa....
“Do we want to do business with those countries? The answer is yes. Do we want to do business with those 83 million? The answer is yes.”
Mr. Childs said IBM believes customers are more comfortable doing business with companies that look like them and can relate to their values. The composition of IBM’s 300,000-plus global work force is gradually changing, although, he said, it has some distance to go before it fully reflects the population at large.
In the company’s U.S. operations last year, out of the total of 19,464 officials and managers, 14,019 were men, 5,445 were women, 1,285 were black, 1,070 were from Asian backgrounds, 586 were Hispanic and 64 were native American. Women now make up almost 30 per cent of the IBM work force worldwide; 33 per cent in Canada.
However, unless more girls pursue careers in the high-tech field, IBM will be hard-pressed to recruit enough women to reduce the gender imbalance, Mr. Childs said. To this end, in partnership with local school boards, IBM now sponsors summer tech camps for girls in Grades 7 and 8 in the hopes of hooking them before they make the decision to drop math and science in high school.
It stays in touch with these girls through “e-mentors” drawn from IBM’s senior-level female ranks. The tech camps and the golf lessons for children still in day care are examples, Mr. Childs said, of long-range strategy to address current problems.
Appointed to his current position in 1991, Mr. Childs established a number of task forces in 1995 to advise IBM executives on diversification strategy. There’s a task force each for women, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, native Indians, disabled people, men and the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered group. He also struck a task force to advise the company on work/life balance issues.
The diversity task forces, whose work is continuing, were each assigned to address three questions, Mr. Childs said. What is required to make members of their group feel welcome and valued at IBM? What measures can they take, in partnership with the company, to maximize their productivity? And what should IBM be doing externally to influence the purchasing decisions of their group?
In addition, IBM has a program that partners its executives with current or prospective customers from similar backgrounds. For instance, black IBM executives, in addition to their regular duties, call on black business contacts, Hispanics call on Hispanics.
“I have a couple of accounts,” Mr. Childs said. “I made my first call last year ... a brother-to-brother call.” It’s a strategy that has gone over well with the customers, he said.
“We’re going to see more companies owned by women or by ethnic minorities. If we get to them in their infancy and grow with them, that’s how we’ll grow,” Mr. Childs said. “It’s about opportunity, the opportunity for IBM to compete.”
Support for the community
“Giving back to the community is as important to us as it is to you. In the past decade, IBM has given back in excess of $1 billion to a wide variety of organizations that includes ASTRAEA Lesbian Action Foundation, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (LLDEF), National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).”
Can they find us-born, English speakers, with adequate phone skills in downtown Dubuque?
Unfortunately...that let ‘em die means that good conservatives who worked their assess off like my husband also get whacked, as he did last week. Two weeks serverance and a tough job market...not so good I can assure you
Terible news. This isn’t just limited to IBM but any companies that service IBM for the branches being impacted. It’s also happening at HP as well. It’s an aweful blow not just to our economy but the folks who will be exiting into a bleak job market.
ML/NJ
IBM is not dying...they are using globalization to outsource-same old and same old. We will become socialist because the good jobs are disappearing with no replacement jobs...thanks free traitors. You promised that we would keep the smart jobs...free trade and globalization is the biggest fraud ever inflicted on the American people...don’t let IBM send any products made overseas back...fat tariffs for IBM who obviously have no love of country...Let them become Indian citizens then.
It could not happen to a more deserving traitor crowd.
Wow did you say 1300 jobs? IBM is cutting thousands of Americans so I could care a less about the token Americans...although I am happy a lucky few have jobs. IBM a global company-not an American company.
Careful now. Some of us work for these companies. The SmartPlanet commercials are good marketing especially with the new Administration. Before you open your mouth, do your homework first.
I would like to know where in the Constitution that we are entitled a good paying job..
..
Sure you ain't talking bout our US of A?
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