Pink slips paint big blue picture in US

Economic Times of India ^ | August 21, 2003 | CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

[sarcasm]

WASHINGTON: The leafy, undulating state of Vermont escaped the massive power outage that struck much of north eastern United States last week. But a bigger misfortune awaited the Great Mountain State on Monday. When John Neader (49) walked in to his workplace at IBM’s Vermont plant start of the week, a manager knocked on his door and said they needed to talk.

She then handed him a pink slip along with a package with details of his severance pay, bringing to an abrupt end his 26-year service at the iconic American firm fondly called Big Blue.

Neader was among the 500 employees who were handed the blues at IBM’s Vermont facility, the state’s largest employer.

Another 300 have been asked to leave on a week’s unpaid leave next month.

At its peak in 2000, the plant provided more than 8,500 jobs, nearly 3 per cent of the state — one of America’s smaller ones — workforce.

That number is now down to 6,200, the lowest since 1994. The layoffs came days after reports that IBM was set to ramp up its workforce in India from its current 4,500 to 10,000 in the next two years.

There is an increasing pattern of US companies like Intel, Dell, AOL and others downsizing in the US while expanding  operations in India and other countries even if the jobs are not similar. Those 500 jobs will not go to India, IBM spokesman Jeff Couture explained.

The layoffs, mostly on the manufacturing side, have to do with the downturn in microelectronics.

IBM has a research and development laboratory and a software development center in India. It is also setting up a business process outsourcing (BPO) center in Bangalore, but unlike Dell, Intel and other firms, does not have manufacturing activities in India.

Laid-off American workers are too aggrieved to take note of this and blame the outsourcing trend for the rash of pink slips across the United States.

‘If CEOs want to throw us out of work, maybe we should outsource the CEOs to India and save a lot of money for the shareholders’, was one angry comment on an Internet bulletin board.

Ruel Loehr, a laid-off software programmer who had only recently joined IBM, said he did not want to discuss developments, before hanging up the phone.

[sarcasm]

ping

[CGASMIA68]

She then handed him a pink slip along with a package with details of his severance pay
Wonder what "the package" included?May have been a blessing in disguise?

[lelio]

For his sake I hope its at least a year's pay. What's the employment prospects in Vermont for an ex-IBMer that's of of 500 just laid off?

[CGASMIA68]

hopefully they were fully funding any retirement vehicle available and can keep it working for a few more years..looks like the "old timers" got the ax and the newbies were requested to cut back the hours....so they may have gotten a decent chunk of change and Bib B got to charge a 1x write off//////who knows

[Fraulein]

‘If CEOs want to throw us out of work, maybe we should outsource the CEOs to India and save a lot of money for the shareholders’, was one angry comment on an Internet bulletin board.

Hmmm. I remember reading such a comment on FR...

[arasina]

Okay. I see this article is from India. But has anyone besides the author seen Vermont undulating lately?

[harpseal]

Ping on or off let me know

[harpseal]

Now a solution to the problem because clearly this is a question of government policy

[harpseal]

In no particular order of importance.

1. Get rid of government subsidies for offshore investment of US companies. OPIC is the first such program which should go but support of World Bank programs that subsidize the outflow of Capital would be another.

2. Use tariffs on those nations which are engaged in unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation (China and India for example), those nations which refuse to open their markets to US products (China for example with its 50% tariffs on US consumer goods and non tariff barriers), those nations that subsidize competition to American Industry (airbus for example) and those nations which have slave conditions for their workers.

3. Use tariffs and other means to prevent the relocation of jobs offshore that are essential to the national defense. If necessary take control of the company seeking to export vital technology or industry by means of eminent domain (No I do not like this last option and I will only defend its use as an absolute last resort like say in the case of rare earth magnets essential to smart bomb technology). Provide a hardened, widely distributed infrastructure to supply all that is needed for our military units and civil defense that can be continued to be deployed in the event of any military attack.

4. An immediate end to guest worker programs. If people wish to come to the USA to work and make a life let them immigrate according to the rules.

5 Provide economic development zones where the corporate income tax is zero for operations within these zones. In order to operate in this zone a company must agree to only purchase American components if available and employ only American citizens or legal immigrants in these operations. These economic development zones shall be eventually be expanded to include every bit of every state once the benefits are shown I would like them to be totally implemented immediately but I realize4 that may be overreaching.

6. Scale back unnecessary regulation including the tort system. Institute a cap on punitive damages, limits on class action suits, and limits on liability to the actual percentage of liability with no plaintiff able to collect if said plaintiff was involved in the commission of a felony at the time of the alleged tort or was more than 49% negligent in the alleged tort. Note that the loser in a frivolous lawsuit shall pay the attorney fees of the winner. There are many other regulatory structures that also need to be included that need to be included such as repealing the Family leave mandate, getting rid of OSHA etc.

7. Increase the domestic content in purchases by the Department of defense and give absolute preference in non-domestic content to proven allies of the USA over say the French or Germans. The only reason any content for DOD purchase may come from non US allies is that content is not available elsewhere and is essential.

8. Do not allow expense involved in moving operations overseas to be included in business expenses under the IRS code.

9. Prosecute for perjury anyone who has made a false statement in order to employ an H1B or L1 visa worker. I will be lenient on the actual perjurer if he/she was ordered to make this false statement and he/she provides testimony to aid in the conviction of the person ordering the perjury. Just because a person is a CEO does not give them a pass on criminal behavior.

10. Prosecute anyone who orders the transfer of vital defense technology or funds a R&D project that could be of use to our military overseas except to strong allies of the USA. Make the necessary enhancements to our espionage laws so that continued support or funding of any R&D in a nation whose government has threatened the USA is guilty of espionage. The UK and Australia come to mind as meeting these criteria for being eligible for transfer of technology first. There will be other nations and a gradation of what can be transferred to which specific nation. Under no circumstances may technology be transferred to any nation whose government has threatened the USA within five years without a complete change of government or specific exemption from Congress and the administration.

11. Deport all illegal aliens immediately and take measures that prevent the entry of any more illegal aliens. Fine all companies knowingly employing illegal aliens Criminal sanctions should be imposed on anyone helping an illegal alien stay in the USA in violation of our laws.

12. Decrease the punishing levels of taxation on companies and eliminate the double taxation on corporate dividends. See effects of item 5 for how minimal this will be if item 5 covers the entire USA. Eliminate all IRS provisions that inhibit free use of independent contractors by businesses for example section 1706.

13. Eliminate the minimum wage so that the worker can be paid based on productivity. Overtime compensation will remain the same but instead of 150% of the "wage" the worker would receive 150% of the production pay. If one through 13 are enacted # 14 becomes an irrelevancy as no one will be working for that low a wage.

Now since I started posting this plan another idea has come up that in my opinion is a very good policy that stands on its own. Now I give credit to Jim Gibson and Freeper Ed_in_NJ for coming up with the idea, separately to the best of my knowledge. However I can be corrected on that. The tariff phrasing is from Jim Gibson.

“I suggest that the US Customs Department charge a $1,000-per-container inspection fee on every container entering the United States. This fee would be used to completely fund the cost of inspections. If we assumed that a four-man team could fully inspect two containers a day or about 500 per year, it would require 48,000 inspectors. Allowing for at least 2,000 support personnel, we would need at least 50,000 workers. Because these workers would require high intelligence and skill levels they should earn at least $30 per hour. At 40-hour weeks plus benefits, I estimate the cost per worker to be over $75,000 per year, all paid by the foreign manufacturers. Even so, this would still leave over $2.25 billion to cover all other costs. Any revenue not used would be used to compensate American workers displaced by foreign imports. “

I urge and encourage everyone who agrees with this plan and or the terror tariff idea to communicate this to every politician you can think of.

[rdb3]

BUMP!

[lelio]

IBM has a research and development laboratory and a software development center in India. It is also setting up a business process outsourcing (BPO) center in Bangalore, but unlike Dell, Intel and other firms, does not have manufacturing activities in India.

Wonder why that is. Maybe they have enough in China and other Asian countries? Or they have enough here in the US? Or should we just give them time?

[pabianice]

Not too bad. When Bob Palmer was raping and strangling Digitial Equipment Corporation (he left with a $ 52 million pay-off while, 90,000 lost their jobs, lives' savings, marriages, etc.), you were called to a meeting, your badge was yanked, and you were then escorted back to your desk, where you had 60 minutes to box your stuff and leave the building forever.

[arete]

"Workers be warned. The layoff slips will probably begin flowing in bigger numbers in coming months."

Layoffs more common in last 4 months of year, firm says

Richard W.

[Euro-American Scum]

you were called to a meeting, your badge was yanked, and you were then escorted back to your desk, where you had 60 minutes to box your stuff and leave the building forever.

When the bloodletting began at our company, the local police were summoned, and the IT software support staff were taken out in handcuffs to prevent any possibility of system sabotage by potentially disgruntled employees.

Nothing personal. Just in the best interests of the company, of course.

[oceanview]

what happened at DEC was bad for sure. But it was different then what is going on now. DEC's business collapsed (bad mgmt et al), the marketplace changed and they didn't, and there was no basis to retain workers given the condition of the company.

The people at IBM, Oracle, Dell, etc aren't being laid off because there is no work for them. They are being dis-employed, their jobs are being sent to India, the work still exists.

[oceanview]

I've been saying for a couple of weeks here now, talking to friends of mine in 3 states, white collar IT/tech layoffs are going to be very big from now until the end of the year.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

The GOP better wake up. Throw out the H1-B and L-1 visas, reward those companies who don't outsource with federal contracts and tax breaks, and cut off illegal immigration.

If they don't recognize there's a problem, they'll be the ones getting the pink slips.

[Walkin Man]

[Fellow Traveler]

I was a data warehouse programmer at WorldCom until last December. We did not have to sabatoge anything. There were only three of us left doing the work of what had been a 57 person group. The system did not stay up on it's own through the next week. They kept calling us asking where different things were and how the code worked. The worst part of the whole experience was the fact that we were moving between buildings when we were laid off. Our managers were in Virginia and we were in Texas. It took most of the morning for them to track us down because of the move. Then we couldn't leave because none of the boxes or computers had been delivered to our cubicles. We finally got everything unpacked sorted out and finally left the building by 5:30 pm. What a mess!