Patrick Thibodeau
Computer World
March 3, 2010
After shrinking its U.S. workforce by as many as 10,000 employees last year, IBM this week may be on its way to cutting another 2,000 workers.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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IBM isn’t commenting on its latest round of cuts and information about it comes from the Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701, which gathers its data directly from IBM employees. The Alliance, which has blamed offshoring for many of the layoffs, has been trying to win bargaining rights for employees.
“IBM is clearly offshoring things where they can,” said one IBM employee who received his notice yesterday and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to jeopardize his severance. A 10-year veteran and UNIX administrator, this employee said his customer support team once had 15 U.S.-based workers. That staff was reduced over time to just three workers in the U.S., with other members of the customer support team now in Brazil, Argentina and India.
The employee said he was not given a good reason for his layoff. “Higher ups made a decision that a certain percentage had to be cut – it was not performance-based at all,” he said. Although the employee said he’s uncertain about the job market, “my sense is that it is not horrendous [but] I’ll have to assume that I’ll have to take a cut in pay.”
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