IBM Has Cut Around 10,000 US Jobs In 2009 - Union

August 26, 2009: 05:25 PM ET


SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has laid off approximately 10,000 - roughly double the reported figure - of its North American employees since the start of the year, according to figures from a union.

Lee Conrad, an organizer for the Communication Workers of America, which is trying to push IBM employees to unionize, said IBM had made at least 9,308 job cuts since the start of 2009. The figure was calculated using data from redundancy packages, which are called "resource action packages" within IBM. The bulk of the jobs lost were in the U.S., with a handful in Canada.

The figures are likely conservative, Conrad said, because they don't count contractors and staff who have lost their jobs but didn't get redundancy packages or were transferred to different locations.

An IBM spokesperson declined to comment on the specific numbers of jobs lost.

"IBM manages a worldwide base of nearly 400,000 employees and we have acknowledged notifying employees in North America of job reductions," a spokesman for IBM said in a statement. "We regularly make changes in our workforce talent as our clients demand new skills, lower costs, new resources or different solutions."

According to union data, jobs have been lost across a range of business units and disciplines including services, hardware, marketing, human resources and finance.

In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM planned to lay off around 5,000 employees. Many of those positions were to be transferred to India and other cheaper locations.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM has been steadily shifting its employee base to locations like India and reducing its U.S.-based workforce. Foreign-based workers now account for more than 70% of its employees.

IBM isn't alone in making significant headcount reductions due to the recession. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Hewlett Packard Co. (HPQ) and Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) have all announced layoffs.

Shares of IBM have rebounded sharply since the market bottom in March. On Wednesday, IBM closed up 0.5% at $119.47.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200908261725DOWJONESDJONLINE000597_FORTUNE5.htm

Cheap-ass bastards.

Hell, Microsoft has people giving away QC and other issues already with those error reports...

the American corporation in decline, and this is why and how.