Posted on 04/01/2018 8:41:46 AM PDT by catnipman
It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas.
ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.
In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
Among ProPublica’s findings, IBM:
Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.
Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.
Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.
Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
(Excerpt) Read more at features.propublica.org ...
You are dead on Right. Ginny running it into the ground. Some of the most talented people in the world routinely exited.
I see it happening around me as well. Expect a defense where part of it rests on ‘diversity.’ They don’t want to have those old native-borns that were encouraged to study hard and go into tech as kids hanging around.
Go ***** a camel. Microsoft had a dividend payout of $57 billion.
If they’d invested it in state bonds it would have thrown off free cash flow of over $1 billion a year, without touching principal or jeopardizing cash flow from continuing operations.
You are right. They have a great legal team. They are very careful to not leave evidence that can be used against them. It is not sour grapes. They have lost a number of cases. In the past the reverence payment was big enough that people just signed the release. If you think all big companies care about the law I have a bridge to sell to you.
I was part of Carly’s WFR (work force reduction) at HP in 2010. My IRA says that this is the best thing that could have happened to me. Someday it will be Corporate America’s turn.
Time to put an end to H1-B visas.
If we have a shortage of good technical people, let the market reflect that, and increasing wages will lure many back into the workplace, and many young folks into STEM fields in college.
The cutoff gets lower and lower every year. Got me at 47 last year.
sorry, not following your point.
Why would Microsoft invest in Bonds - maybe like the City of Detroit?? Microsoft is not a Fund manager.
Cheap labor enhances Corp. profitability. If you own Microsoft stock that is what you would like as the value of your Microsoft stock would rise and you could potentially get Rich $$$.
The H1B is the biggest scam going, wholesale abused... it can’t be “fixed” it needs gone.
“I’d like to see Trump put in place a federal contract ban on all companies using offshore workers.”
EXCELLENT IDEA!!!
“Many hardware companies have collapsed by trying to tell customers that it was their way or the highway.
Sun Microsystems for one.
MIPS for another”
don’t forget DEC! the quintessential “my hardware, my way, or the highway” computer company. And, boy did they go down the highway!
a microexample was NBI, the word processor company out of Boulder, which death-spiralled down the proprietary hardware highway, when every employee in the company (and all of their customers) knew that they had to abandon their proprietary hardware and convert their word processing software to work on the IBM-compatible PC ...
There is no legitimate economic reason for Microsoft to hire H1-B visa holders over citizens. It is pure greed and anti-caucasian bias.
The company I worked at for the last 15 years has announced another new plan to rate everyone, you know to improve performance.... They had in the past fired thousands of people and closed entire offices only to open those offices with new people at lower pay.
I will be 60 soon and hopefully will not be laid off as they would worry about a age discrimination suit. I show up every day unlike too many of my younger co-workers. I have quite a bit of savings in stock and if I can draw Social security money at 67 or better at 70 ($500/month more) and the stock price goes up before that then I can retire and not worry about money. In the coming year or so and with the stock price going up then no worries.
Those that came up with the plan to rate everyone may be safe but all the middle managers and regular office drones are not.
Sad story. Sorry for your loss.
There is a career in foreign asset management.
Trust me - your government will do no more to protect you from these cheaper Asian workers than ours would.
I see my own teens look for traditional “summer jobs” and “high school jobs” and it is incredible how many have imported adults working them - Americans need not apply. As the “Third Worldization” of NJ continues, it is even harder for teens to find a legitimate, on-the-books job.
A friend of mine works in the elevator repair trade. They have the exact same thing going on. The company he works for is going to lose more than half its experienced folks within 10 years or less. In many cases, they don't even have someone junior working their way up. That company is fucked, because there is no way they are going to be able to even fill the slots with mouth-breathers, much less folk who know what they are doing.
I was with HP/HPE/DXC for a year at a senior post and the same happened namely that I was too expensive and got laid off -- at really, really generous terms. A couple of months later I was brought back on as a consultant at even more generous terms (since now I get all the money as B2B)
The reason for this is simple -- ACCOUNTANTS -- by converting a Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure and showing the shareholders that they can do the same work (ie get the same revenue) for lower numbers of "employees", the share price goes higher
The reality is that the company goes further into the red. Also projects suffer - don't get me wrong, even junior Americans can't replace senior Americans right away.
Net-net, the C level folk get big bonuses and stock options, those laid off get big parachutes and lucrative consulting assignments and the shareholders think they are getting a great deal. At the end the shareholders are screwed (the ones dumb enough not to sell out earlier) and so are the customers
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