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• New York Times: 'What, Me Worry?' By Thomas L. Friedman. Excerpts: Let me translate Mr. Gates's words: "If we don't fix American education, I will not be able to hire your kids." I consider that, well, kind of important. Alas, the media squeezed a few mentions of it between breaks in the Michael Jackson trial. But neither Tom DeLay nor Bill Frist called a late-night session of Congress - or even a daytime one - to discuss what Mr. Gates was saying. They were too busy pandering to those Americans who don't even believe in evolution. And the president stayed fixated on privatizing Social Security. It's no wonder that the second Bush term is shaping up as "The Great Waste of Time." [...]
  "For the first time in our history, we are going to face competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities, embedded within India, China and Asia," President Lawrence Summers of Harvard told me. In order to thrive, "it will not be enough for us to just leave no child behind. We also have to make sure that many more young Americans can get as far ahead as their potential will take them. How we meet this challenge is what will define our nation's political economy for the next several decades." Indeed, we can't rely on importing the talent we need anymore - not in a flat world where people can now innovate without having to emigrate. In Silicon Valley today, "B to B" and "B to C" stand for "back to Bangalore" and "back to China," which is where a lot of our foreign talent is moving.
• Boston Globe: A plan to offshore . . . just 3 miles out. By Hiawatha Bray. Excerpts: Here we are, with thousands of American software engineers clamoring for more work, and these two guys have a plan to carry even more jobs offshore. Not to India this time, or to China. Just . . . offshore. They figure three miles out in the Pacific should be far enough. Roger Green is a software entrepreneur. David Cook was once a supertanker skipper who spent 15 years hauling crude oil through the world's sea lanes. Now the two men have announced a remarkable venture called SeaCode, a company that plans to hire 600 superb software designers from every corner of the world and house them in a luxury cruise ship just out of reach of US immigration law -- but close enough to bid on multimillion-dollar US software contracts. [...]
  The plan is to purchase a cruise ship and refit it as a lavish floating hotel. There'll be private rooms for 600 software engineers and plenty of creature comforts. ''They are fed, housed, and their laundry is done for free," Cook said. There'll be a crew of 300 to attend to their needs; there'll even be free medical care. But this ship is also a floating software factory, with workers toiling around the clock, while clients buzz in by helicopter to check up on them.
• CNET News: Gates wants to scrap H-1B visa restrictions. Excerpts: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates slammed the federal government's strict limits on temporary visas for technology workers, saying that if he had his way, the system would be scrapped entirely. "The theory behind the H-1B (visa)--that too many smart people are coming--that's what's questionable," Gates said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Library of Congress. "It's very dangerous. You can get this idea that the world is very scary; let's cut back on travel...let's cut back on visas."

• "Can you handle the truth?" by "Dose of reality". Excerpt: While it may be a bitter pill to swallow, let me tell you what is going on at BCS. We are having a heck of a time trying to sell work into this market. Without going into the gory details that are all over this board, suffice it to say that most of the real sales and management talent has either departed due to being screwed the last few years, or is actively looking. We also have the wrong business strategy, a bunch of cost-cutting amateurs instead of growth oriented leaders, and BCS is the abused weak sister at IBM. We are expected to work miracles and we get no credit for what we do for the rest of IBM. Abuse flows downhill.
  Behind these front lines, you have bloated support functions like finance and HR, with very little accountability, way too much power, and all the customer service orientation of a 1980s vintage airline baggage handler. Their general MO is to put on a pretense that they are effective in their jobs, but service to you is just a very remote means to an end. Many of them are 9 to 5ers whose main talent is getting connected so that they can’t be touched. They are not evaluated based on their service to you, and it is rare to find one that will work to further your career on any level. They get the most credit for finding creative ways to cut costs and raise targets, regardless of the long term impact on the company. It is a poisoned culture, if ever there was one.
• "Worst company I have ever worked for" by "deepocean". Excerpt: IBM is absolutely the worst company I have ever worked for in my 20 year career. I joined as part of the PwC acquisition and have tried my best to make a career at IBM work. My efforts have been rewarded with salary decreases, no bonuses, and repeated cries from completely useless and uninspiring managers to work more billable hours. Client satisfaction and useful industry solutions are only given lip service. My biggest fear about working for IBM was that clients would think we would always be trying to sell them IBM "solutions" they don't want or need . . . which is exactly what is expected of IBM consultants. What's worse, we're expected to understand and sell stuff that really doesn't even exist. Let's be honest . . .On Demand is nothing but marketing bullsh*t. The amount of bureaucracy and incompetence I have seen at IBM is unbelievable! I would never have believed such a mess could exist within IBM had I not witnessed it personally. If the Board and executives of this company are not completely replaced soon with people with a brain and good business ethics, this company is finished. Wake up stockholders!
• "Wanted to make it work" by "deepocean". Excerpts: Again, you can't tell me it has anything to do with the market rates right now . . . I can do the math. It has more to do with way too much overhead and poor management. At PwC the partners and consultants did everything from sales to delivery. The consultants also did their own billing and collections. IBM has layer upon layer of bureaucracy that costs way too much money . . . thus they can't compensate the consultants who are actually doing the work fairly. IBM has sales executives and delivery executives at every intersection of geography and industry and service line and then there are layers built on all of those intersections. Even worse, there are two groups that do pretty much the same thing (AMS and BCS) but have separate layers of management. You've got to be kidding! When was the last time some of those people actually added any value or billed a client for some work that was done? Or do they simply exist to tell everyone else to work harder and dream up a bunch of stupid sh*t that we should try to sell to our clients (that they really don't want)? Those people are nothing but professional leaches. Not much better than an Amway sales pyramid! IBM is a big, stupid, bureaucratic mess! The sooner the organization (or more likely, the stockholders) realize that reality, the sooner proper steps will be taken to fix it. That means . . .fire your ass and people like you and get some smart people running the show!

• Economic Policy Institute: Social Security's fixable financing issues. Shortfall in funds is not inevitable. By L. Josh Bivens. Excerpts: In 1982, an imminent shortfall in Social Security--the projected inability of Social Security's finances to meet the next year's benefit payments--prompted action by Congress. Adopting several of the recommendations of the bipartisan Greenspan Commission, Congress instituted a series of changes to the Social Security program that increased tax revenues dedicated to the program, and decreased the benefits Social Security pays out. These changes led to a balance (actually, a very small surplus) in the 75-year planning horizon that is traditionally used to grade the system's solvency.
• Washington Post: A Gambler Decides to Raise the Stakes. By Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei. Excerpts: President Bush made a huge gamble last night in a bid to restore momentum to his flagging proposal to restructure Social Security -- and to his presidency. With two in three Americans disapproving of the way Bush has handled Social Security, many political observers thought it would be prudent for Bush to cut his losses and negotiate a bipartisan compromise on Social Security, perhaps without the personal accounts he has promoted for the past several months. [...] Instead, Bush held a prime-time news conference and doubled down on his bet. He continued to press for private accounts while adding a proposal that would cut Social Security spending by $3 trillion over 75 years -- openly defying the longtime belief that proposing cuts in the beloved program is bad politics.
• New York Times: Bush Cites Plan That Would Cut Social Security Benefits. By Richard W. Stevenson and Elisabeth Bumiller. Excerpts: President Bush called Thursday night for cutting Social Security benefits for future retirees to put the system on sound financial footing, and he proposed doing so in a way that would demand the most sacrifice from higher-income people while insulating low-income workers. [...] Under the proposal, first developed by Robert C. Pozen, an investment executive, benefit cuts would be imposed gradually on future retirees. The cuts would fall most heavily on people at upper income levels. The cuts would be less, but still substantial, for middle-income workers. Low- income people would suffer no benefit cut at all. Politically, the plan has the advantage, in the White House's view, of being attractive to moderate Democrats by making the system more progressive.

• Federal Court: IBM on wrong side of the law. Speech to IBM stockholders meeting by James Marc Leas, in support of Resolution 4: Stockholder Proposal on Pension and Retirement Medical. Charleston, SC April 26, 2005. Excerpts: Mr. Palmisano, when you and Mr. Gerstner slashed long promised retirement pay and retirement medical in 1999, you created an unprecedented groundswell of protest among tens of thousands of IBM employees who knew instinctively that your actions were illegal and immoral. They were not just angry that you were stealing earned compensation from them when they were old and most in need. They were not just angry because you broke promises made to them over decades that retirement pay and retirement medical insurance were a secure part of their earned compensation, that retirement pay was safely held in an separate pension trust fund, and that this fund would be used for the exclusive benefit of retirees. They were also angry because by breaking trust with employees you were putting the whole IBM company at risk. [...]
  When you and Mr. Gerstner reneged on the promised and earned pension and retirement medical, you blew the competitive advantage provided by a $70 billion pension trust fund, you blew the fierce loyalty, and you blew the trust of IBM employees. And when IBM employees found that Gerstner had made the decision and Palmisano maintained the decision for self serving reasons many talented IBMers, including many inventors left to join the competition. IBM paid a heavy price to put Mr. Gerstner and Mr. Palmisano's pay at risk. Reneging on promised retirement pay is a good part of why IBM missed deadlines and why sales and profits stagnated these past five years, and why IBM was forced to leave or sell businesses that used to be very profitable.
• Analysis of IBM's revenue, profit, and vapor profit. Excerpts: While revenue and profit have been stagnant, vapor profit grew rapidly and then declined rapidly. Vapor profit is the paper boost to IBM income from pension fund accounting rules. It is purely an accounting rule treatment: no money is transferred to IBM from the pension fund. For example, vapor profit in 2003 was $692 + $111 million = $803 million. For 2004 the vapor profit had shrunk to only $-95 million. The IBM pension fund holds $76.0 billion for retirees (p. 82 of the 2004 annual report). In years past this fund helped attract and retain highly qualified employees--providing pension at little or no cost to the company. Pension works to attract and retain employees only if they can trust that it will be there when they retire. When IBM converted to cash balance plan in 1999 it destroyed the trust essential for IBM to benefit from its pension plan. Thus, IBM gave up an enormous competitive advantage. In the table below, the after tax profit column is subdivided into "vapor profit" and "all other profit."...
• IBM France Employees strike over job cuts. Excerpt: "Almost all of the staff on duty in IBM Toulouse went on strike. The ITS Maintenance service was closed in the whole South of France (Bordeaux/Toulouse/Montpellier/Marseille). In the office building 80% on strike. It is more difficult to say how many of our co-workers were on strike in the remote locations, or at customer site. The bedsheet posted on the wall of the office is in full sight from the highway below (management made us remove it during the morning ). Local press is reporting on the parallel strikes in Marseille and Toulouse."
• Verdi protests layoffs at IBM. Excerpt: Some 750 IBM employees and trade unionists gathered on Tuesday April 26 in front of the German IBM headquarters in Stuttgart. The protest was triggered by IBM's announcement in March to close down two subsidiaries in Hanover and Schweinfurt, leading to some 600 dismissals. Although IBM had locked all the exits quite a number of headquarter employees joined the protest demonstration. Many other protesters had come on buses from Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hanover and Schweinfurt. Many protesters carried ver.di flags and posters blaming IBM for bad management. Though most of them were IT professionals not normally taking to the street to express their anger, the colorful demonstration looked no different from other demonstrations. They blew whistles and shouted angrily, when speakers pointed the finger at IBM management for trying to please the stock markets and increasing short-term profits through laying off employees. The first protest rally was held in Hanover during CeBIT - the large IT fair. Stuttgart was the second protest and more action is expected in coming months.
  UNI's Gerhard Rohde conveyed a solidarity message to the demonstration and said that the IBM strategy was wrong and counterproductive. "In order to stay competitive in global markets this company has to take care of their human capital," said Gerhard. "People who are de-motivated, intimidated and unhappy with the company's behaviour cannot perform at their best." Most prominent speaker was Frank Bsirske, Verdi President and President of UNI Europa. He said that the company had violated legal regulations as laid down by German company constitutional law. He urged management to re-think the closure of subsidiaries, which, he stressed, was not justified economically as the company is in good shape. He also expressed concerns that this was only the first step of a major overhaul of IBM's global service business. He said that ver.di is determined to fight any forced dismissals and that those made redundant should be offered alternative jobs in the company.
  • More pictures of the German workers protest
• Job cut alert! Alliance@IBM is receiving information that a resource action is about to happen in IGS. Please send any information to endicottalliance@stny.rr.com.
• View the Think Twice show [Video, approximately 1 hour, requires RealMedia Player] Editors' note: We highly recommend this video. In it you'll meet leading activists at the Alliance@IBM, hear about the history of the Alliance, get updates on Alliance activities around the country, and hear about the shareholder proposals of interest to IBM employees.