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Highlights
for week ending November 4, 2000
- A
retirees council is being formed as part of the Alliance@IBM /CWA.
- South Africa Business Report: Strip
away pensions' veneer to find ugly face of capitalism. "Martins
who worked for IBM, the IT company, for 26 years until he retired in
1986, died in July in miserable circumstances. His electricity and phone
had been cut off because he was unable to pay the bills. At the time
of his death Martins and other IBM pensioners were battling to get nothing
more than they were entitled to from the IBM South Africa pension fund.
After years of pension increases lagging inflation, in 1995 they had
been promised that they would be given increases sufficient to catch
up with inflation."
- IBM
Endicott switch and bait scam
- An
IGS employee comments on why he was laid off
- A
posting on the IBM investment board explains why IBM stockholders should
care about what Gerstner has done to the company
- CPR
hypothesizes on the future of IBM, including major sell offs of divisions.
Another
poster tells him "he's close."
- CPR
discusses Lou Gerstner's strengths, and his weaknesses
- Wall Street Journal: Retirees Found Varity
Untruthful As Firm Sought to Lower Costs. "Just a week before
Christmas in 1986, Jill Wellman, benefits manager at a unit of Varity
Corp., wrote a memo about how the company could reduce its retiree health-care
costs. 'You have asked that I be inventive in coming up with a solution,'
she wrote. 'As far as I can determine there is only one solution' that
doesn't involve the risk of having to pay the benefits in the end, 'and
that would be the death of all existing retirees and survivors.'"
... "Her memo, however, went on to suggest 'more practical' though
'not necessarily legal' solutions to meet the cost-cutting goal sought
by Varity, a farm and industrial equipment maker, as well as hundreds
of other companies at the time. These included establishing 'an offshore
company responsible for the retirees but not accountable under United
States law and have it go bankrupt and thus terminate the plans.' Another
option: terminating the benefits, facing 'an almost certain class-action
suit' and negotiating a settlement pact."
- Motley Fool
Message board posting about the two employee-sponsored stockholder resolutions
- James
Grant Blasts IBM. "IBM's creditors seem positively oblivious
to how much debt Big Blue has piled up in its stock-buyback spree of
recent years. But a look at the company's plunging ratio of cash to
maturing debt raises caution flags."
- How
George W. Bush Really Made His Millions
- eWeek: IT
workers: Look for the union label? "H1-Bs are simply high-class
indentured servants," Kelber said. If American-born programmers,
database administrators and other IT workers see their companies hiring
increasing numbers of such workers, they might well ask what the impact
is on them -- and whether their jobs are really secure, he added."
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