Join your fellow employees who are fighting for your benefits - Join the Alliance!

Retirees, Vendors, Contractors, Temps, and Active Employees are all eligible to become members of the Alliance.

• Wall Street Journal: Treasury Probe Cites Abuses In Ties Between IBM, Agency. By Theo Francis. Excerpts: An investigation into ties between Treasury Department officials and International Business Machines Corp. shows the Treasury worked closely with IBM on pension issues and provided information that was subsequently misused in the company's lobbying. The report, released this week by the Treasury's Office of the Inspector General, also said a Treasury official disclosed nonpublic information to IBM and failed to report expenses paid by a lobbyist for a pension-industry trade group.
  The Justice Department didn't pursue criminal or civil charges in the matters because they didn't meet the agency's "prosecutorial threshold" or "lacked litigative appeal," according to the report.
  The redacted document, released under the Freedom of Information Act, says IBM representatives met regularly with a Treasury official to help draft regulations on cash-balance pension plans.
  The report says a Treasury official emailed "talking points" about cash-balance pension plans in September 2003 to an attorney at Covington & Burling, which represented IBM in a lawsuit involving its pension plan. At the time lawmakers were considering an amendment restricting the Treasury's ability to adopt regulations that would help overturn a recent federal court ruling against IBM.
  Treasury officials told OIG investigators they believed it was appropriate for agency employees to provide nonpublic information to administration "allies" who shared their public-policy objectives.
  The report says someone with ties to IBM took the emailed document, pasted the Treasury seal on the top and distributed it to congressional offices, to discourage them from voting for the amendment.
  The report found IBM's actions "seemed to make out the elements of an offense" by misusing the department's seal, an OIG spokesman said.
  The Treasury didn't pursue administrative penalties for the misuse of its seal, according to the report and Treasury officials.
  In a statement, IBM said that it cooperated with the investigation and that its employees "believed they were redistributing a public document" that hadn't been altered.
  The report said the investigation began after articles in The Wall Street Journal mentioned the altered memo and a party hosted by William Sweetnam, then Benefits Tax Counsel at Treasury, and Brian Graff, executive director and a lobbyist for the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, a pension-industry trade group. The party was attended by lobbyists and congressional staff working on pension legislation. (See related article.)
  The OIG found that a pension-industry lobbyist improperly expensed $1,455 for two parties co-hosted by a Treasury official, and more than $5,000 in travel and related expenses for a Treasury official. The document said the Treasury official didn't report the expenses required by federal ethics rules, and that these actions appear to have violated ethics and disclosure rules.
  Federal prosecutors said they didn't bring charges in part because the Treasury official left the agency.
  Mr. Sweetnam left the Treasury in February 2005 to run Groom Law Group's public-policy and legislation practice. "There were some misunderstandings on my reporting obligations, but there was nothing intentional," or any intent of quid pro quo, said Mr. Sweetnam, who added that he hadn't seen the report.
  Mr. Graff said he hadn't seen the report, but says he inadvertently expensed the costs for both parties and has since repaid his employer. "There is nothing that we pay for that we would view as being inappropriate from an ethics perspective," he said.
  A spokesman for Covington & Burling said in a statement: "We are satisfied that Covington & Burling's lawyers have, without exception, fully adhered to their ethical and legal obligations."
• Wall Street Journal: U.S. Declines to Pursue Charges That IBM Misused Treasury Seal. By Charles Forelle. Excerpts: The Justice Department has declined to pursue criminal and civil charges against International Business Machines Corp. that it misused the Treasury Department's official seal, according to a report released by the department's inspector general. The case dates to 2003, when an IBM lobbyist distributed a document bearing the seal and the department's name to various congressional offices. The document supported IBM's positions on pending legislation regarding cash-balance pensions.
  The Treasury Department found IBM had taken the department's emailed "talking points" on the cash-balance pension issue, pasted a Treasury seal on them and redistributed them as part of an "information package" to congressional staffers. The report said that the use of the seal and name had been referred for action by the Treasury Department, but that the Justice Department had declined to become involved.
  The report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, was heavily redacted, and it wasn't clear precisely who provided the talking points initially to IBM. [...]
  When the document was distributed in 2003, IBM was opposing efforts by Rep. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, to block the Treasury Department from issuing certain pension regulations. Those regulations could have given IBM a victory by helping to reverse a federal-court ruling that had gone against IBM's pension plan. The court had found IBM discriminated against older workers when it converted to a cash-balance plan. Mr. Sanders's amendment later passed.
  • Kathi Cooper (of Cooper v. IBM) comments. Full excerpt: My first inclination is to find out who paid off the Justice Department. (or at least who paid the lobbyist who paid off the Justice Department).
• Wall Street Journal: Many Ties Link Pension Lobby To Regulators. By Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis. Excerpts: The retirements of millions of Americans could hang partly on the relationships between those who regulate pension plans -- and are drafting regulations -- and pension lobbyists and consultants hired by employers and financial firms.
  The relationships are social as well as professional. Consider a recent party at the Washington home of William F. Sweetnam Jr., a lawyer at the Treasury Department who is playing an important role in drafting regulations for what are known as cash-balance pension plans. The party was thrown to welcome a new congressional staffer working on pension issues. It was co-hosted by Brian Graff, a lobbyist for the American Society of Pension Actuaries, a group representing those who make a living running employer-sponsored pension plans, which has lobbied in favor of cash-balance plans.
  Not invited were any of the few lawmakers and congressional staffers who have staked out strong positions against cash-balance plans, which offer financial benefits to employers but can reduce payments to older workers.
  Instead, among the invited guests -- aside from a smattering of congressional and Treasury staffers who work on pension issues -- was a long list of lobbyists representing employers on pension and retirement matters. They included individuals from the Erisa Industry Committee and the American Benefits Council, whose members include International Business Machines Corp., AT&T Corp. and hundreds of other large employers with a financial stake in the outcome of the pension regulations Mr. Sweetnam is drafting.
  Also invited were lobbyists from the American Council of Life Insurers; Wall Street's Securities Industry Association; Davis & Harman and Groom Law Group, law firms that lobby on behalf of employers and benefits consultants; and Cigna Corp., which is defending an age-discrimination suit involving its cash-balance plan. [...]
  There is nothing new about lobbyists, congressional staffers and regulators socializing. But this is a crucial time for the pension business: The Treasury is expected any day to issue regulations on cash-balance plans, determining whether the plans violate age-discrimination laws, and it is developing proposed regulations to determine whether employers can pay departing workers smaller lump sums from cash-balance plans under certain circumstances. Employers have been increasingly eager for favorable regulations since IBM lost an age-discrimination suit in a federal district court in July, and Xerox Corp. in August lost its appeal in a cash-balance case involving the underpayment of lump sums. [...]
  Treasury Secretary John Snow, who has final say on cash-balance regulations, once headed CSX Corp., which implemented a cash-balance plan for newly hired workers this year. Mr. Snow also was on the human-resources committee of Verizon Corp.'s board when it voted to adopt a plan for Verizon employees. Mr. Sweetnam joined Sun Co., now Sunoco Inc., in 1989, as it was implementing one of the first cash-balance plans. In 1995, he joined Towers Perrin, a benefits-consulting firm that has been a prominent promoter of cash-balance plans. He became majority tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee in 1998, serving primarily as an adviser to the then-chairman, Sen. William Roth Jr., where Mr. Sweetnam supported cash-balance plans. Mr. Sweetnam says his positions on the finance committee reflected Sen. Roth's stances.
• The Huffington Post: Want Proof of the Hostile Takeover? Read This. Excerpts: The basic premise of my upcoming book Hostile Takeover is that there are no longer any lines or distinctions between Big Business and government. In Washington's corrupt, money-dominated politics, Corporate America and the American government are one and the same -- both looking to fleece the average citizen as much as possible. The book goes onto note that the only way we are going to take our government back is to stop letting both parties deny that a hostile takeover has occurred. To help end this denial, I find it helpful to show folks concrete examples of what I mean by a "hostile takeover." A new story in the Wall Street Journal today is one of those concrete examples. (Editor's note: The WSJ article referred to is the article at the top of this section, Treasury Probe Cites Abuses In Ties Between IBM, Agency.)
  Back in 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers to introduce an amendment to outlaw so-called "cash balance" pension conversions whereby companies, without warning, reduce the pensions they promised workers without giving those workers a choice to stay in their old pension plan. The amendment ultimately passed the House of Representatives (though was killed in the final conference committee) over the strong objections of Corporate America, including IBM, which had been one of the biggest companies to try to shaft its workers with these kind of pension rip-off schemes.
  But the amendment didn't pass without the Bush administration quite literally turning over the Treasury Department to IBM. As the Washington Post reported at the time, IBM sent around a document to congressional offices labeled "Treasury talking points" that said the Treasury Department "strongly opposes the Sanders amendment to the Transportation/Treasury appropriations bill." Treasury soon admitted that "the department had prepared" the materials, but had never actually released them to corporations to help them lobby to defeat the bill.
  Now, years later, the Wall Street Journal reports that "an investigation into ties between Treasury Department officials and International Business Machines Corp. shows the Treasury worked closely with IBM on pension issues and provided information that was subsequently misused in the company's lobbying." A report demanded by Sanders from the Treasury Department's Inspector General "said a Treasury official disclosed nonpublic information to IBM and failed to report expenses paid by a lobbyist for a pension-industry trade group."
  Those are shocking revelations, even for a corporate-owned administration like the one we have now. However, perhaps more shocking is the fact that the Journal also notes that "the Justice Department didn't pursue criminal or civil charges in the matters because they didn't meet the agency's 'prosecutorial threshold.'" In other words, yeah, they broke the law and illegally turned the people's government over to Big Business, but that's not worth prosecuting.
  This is your government, ladies and gentlemen of America -- a government that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business. A government where an agency as powerful as the U.S. Treasury Department routinely operates like an arm of the companies such as IBM that it is supposed to be regulating. A government, in short, that is the victim of a Hostile Takeover.

• Physicians for a National Health Program: Massachusetts Health Reform Bill: A False Promise of Universal Coverage. Excerpts: What's Wrong With This Picture? [...] Second, the linchpin of the plan is the false assumption that uninsured people will be able to find affordable health plans. A typical group policy in Massachusetts costs about $4500 annually for an individual and more than $11,000 for family coverage. A wealthy uninsured person could afford that ・but few of the uninsured are wealthy. A 25 year old fitness instructor can find a cheaper plan. But few of the uninsured are young and healthy. According to Census Bureau figures, only 12.4% of the 748,000 uninsured in Massachusetts are both young enough to qualify for low-premium plans (under age 35) and affluent enough (incomes greater than 499% of poverty) to readily afford them. Yet even this 12.4% figure may be too high if insurers are allowed to charge higher premiums for persons with health problems; only half of uninsured persons in those age and income categories report that they are in excellent health.
• MS-NBC: Health care is top financial concern for the rich. Wealthy Americans worry that rising costs will eat their assets, survey finds. Excerpt: Those surveyed had annual incomes of $150,000 or more with investable assets of $500,000. Such assets would include a home, bonds and stocks. The retired respondents had at least $1 million in investable assets. Nearly 200 of those surveyed had assets of over $5 million, with 116 of them having assets of $10 million or more.
• Consumer Reports: False promises: ‘Consumer driven’ health plans. Excerpts: A promotional pamphlet for a health savings account (HSA) boasts, “If you plan correctly, you may find that you spend far less for health care than ever before.” True, if you could plan to avoid cancer, being hit by a car, or growing older. But you can’t. [...]
  The reality is that these schemes shift increased financial risk to consumers and will surely weaken our already fragile health-insurance system. HSAs provide little assurance of affordable, quality health care to those with chronic illnesses, families with children, those of moderate incomes, or older Americans with more health-care needs. HSAs do nothing to address the factors that really drive up health costs: care for those with chronic diseases; overuse of technology; hospital care; prescription drugs; and end-of-life care. [...]
  So, who, besides the wealthy, benefits from HSAs? Employers do, since they are shifting health-care costs to their employees and are more able to predict health-care expenses. And financial institutions offering HSAs are poised to reap billions in profits from the fees they can charge in setting up those accounts. [...]
  A health-insurance system can function only if costs and risks are spread among healthy and sick participants. But healthy employees who don’t expect to need much medical care are the ones most likely to abandon traditional plans in favor of low-premium, high-deductible ones. Those left in traditional plans will be sicker and more risky to insure. That means a greater likelihood of steep premium increases, pricing coverage out of the reach of more workers and adding to the ranks of the uninsured. “Consumer driven” health plans, including HSAs, abandon the premise that the community has a responsibility to care for all members. The health-care system needs fixing, but HSAs are a sham substitute for comprehensive reform.
• Wall Street Journal: The CEO Health Plan. In Era of Givebacks, Some Executives Get Free Coverage After They Retire. By Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis. Excerpts: At a time when companies are scaling back health benefits for other retirees, former top executives at many corporations are receiving partial or full lifetime medical coverage on top of pensions valued at millions of dollars, a Wall Street Journal analysis of dozens of recent securities filings indicates. [...]
  Companies often provide their top executives with more generous health-care plans than other full-time employees get and then continue to provide the richer benefits through retirement. AT&T Inc. pays up to $100,000 per family per year for its top executives' out-of-pocket health-care costs through a separate insurance policy, and executives who joined the former SBC Corp. before 1999 get to keep that coverage in retirement. An AT&T spokeswoman says AT&T gives other retirees and employees "very good medical benefits" compared with other companies. [...]
  The practice angers retirees who face rising health-care premiums and co-payments and, in many cases, are losing their retirement health benefits entirely. "Executives are receiving multimillion-dollar pensions and are in a position to easily pay for their health care," says Jane Banfield, a retired AT&T manager. "Instead, they want the icing on the cake by also guaranteeing themselves free health care," she says.
• Economic Policy Institute: Increasing health costs can't explain earnings dip for low-wage workers. Excerpts: President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors has argued that rising health insurance costs have squeezed workers wages across the income scale. As a practical matter, however, health insurance costs cannot explain the recent decline in wages for the lowest-paid workers because so few of them are covered by health insurance.
  he chart below illustrates the fact that workers in the bottom 20% of the wage scale suffered a 1.9% decline in real wages between 2004 and 2005. It also shows that only 24% of those workers were covered by employer-provided health insurance in 2004. Health costs would have had to increase by 39% to explain the decline in wages for these workers, when, in reality, they increased only 9.2% from 2004 to 2005.
• Physicians for a National Health Program: The New Yorker Comment: Consumption. By Hendrik Hertzberg. Excerpts: Perhaps you have been wondering who or what is to blame for the high cost of medical care in this land of ours - and, more broadly, for the ungainly, unjust mess that is the American health-care system. If so, wonder no more. Your government has fingered the culprit: it’s “the vast majority of Americans.” [...]
  Hubbard’s article, headlined “The Health of a Nation,” begins with a frank-sounding acknowledgment that “in the past five years” - that is, since the present Administration took office - “private health insurance premiums have risen 73 percent,” with the result that “some businesses” have dropped coverage altogether. “What is driving this unsustainable run-up in health insurance costs,” Hubbard asks, “and how can we make things better?” Then comes what bloggers call the money quote: Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use - so much so that they often do not even ask for prices.
  Can this really be the Administration’s view of the health-care crisis? That its root cause is that Americans are (a) malingerers and (b) freeloaders who perversely refuse to go comparison shopping when illness strikes? That we're overinsured? Hard as it is to believe that this is what they say, it’s even harder to believe that this is what they believe. [...]
  Medicare - a mixed system, under which the insurance function is socialized while the care itself remains in private hands - dedicates two per cent of its resources to administration. By contrast, the private health-insurance industry spends a fortune - more than ten per cent of its income - on administrative dreadnoughts devoted largely to vetoing treatments, sloughing off sick or potentially sick clients, and scheming to stick someone else with the bill. In the United States, we spend fifteen per cent of our gross domestic product on health care, close to six thousand dollars per person. The French and the Canadians spend ten per cent of G.D.P., about three thousand dollars per head. Yet their “health outcomes,” measured by indices like longevity, are better than ours. If they spent the kind of money we do, they’d live forever.

• "Thanks DM" by "phooey69". Full excerpt: I've actually been around for a while...and fortunately, not in a recently acquired account. That said, there are a lot of scary trends that still make me nervous. You just mentioned a bunch of them...layoffs, unfinished solution implementations, high PM turnover. Those have been going on for so long one becomes numb to it all.
  There are other trends that are scary also. For example, we have had "extreme cost controls" on capital and expense purchases (heavily restricted travel, holds on PC upgrades, etc.) for years. It's hard to describe adequately without sounding like whining, but a lot of crazy stuff goes on in the business simply because of the cost-control culture.
  Yet at the same time that heavy cost controls are going on, lots of "process-related" activity is being established. Lots of flowcharts, increased action paths for decision-making...things like that. Don't get me wrong -- there's a need for some level of formalized process in any organization...but we seem to take it to extremes. (For example...it's not unheard of to see conference calls with dozens of people to review what can best be reviewed by one or two people.) It's all pretty crazy, let me tell you...not sure where it all ends.
• "Phooey69" by "Frank_Reality". Full excerpt: Welcome. You are not the only division 07 poster here. There are several others. BTW - you do understand that the "Spirit" initiative is merely a cheap attempt to buy improved morale without having to fix the many real causes? Alas, Ms. Saint-Surin is little more than a cheerleader. One who has neither been tasked nor funded to fix the root causes of poor morale. So, try to enjoy the few trinkets and events the Spirit teams provide, because that's all you're getting.
• "Process, process, process, hardening of the arteries" by "wonderaboutibm". Full excerpt: At IBM, process has become the refuge of small minds. You are quite correct that all projects need good processes. It's also true that many IBMers are process-driven, as they should be and need to be. But along the way the small minds got caught up in the process of process, not why they implement process.
  This is an ingrained cultural flaw at IBM, and is certainly not limited to the SO organization. We have boatloads of "methodologists" going back to the granddaddy WSDDM, which I think still survives for not much good reason. These many methodologists do not appear ever to have been involved in project work, but that does not stop them from various outputs in stupendous volume that few in real project work find useful.
  But I digress from the particular SO pathology on process. Back on point: you can develop process to guide how your work should be done, or you can develop process because you are a paper-doll cutter and you like writing process documentation. Guess which mindset prevails in SO? Ever heard of missing the forest for the trees?
  Come to think of it, that might explain the notorious tendency of SO not to develop process intellectual capital that can be used from one account to another. The process folks subconsciously don't want this IC because that would preclude some fun paper doll cutting seminars.
• "Answers" by "Dose of reality". Excerpts: That being said, IBM and BCS are definitely not employee-friendly places to work. Spend some time surfing this board if you want to garner an appreciation for the culture here. Here are some headlines:
  • Across the board salary cuts two years running
  • Raises in the 0 – 3% range with most closer to 0
  • Bonuses TARGETS at 10 – 15%, but never paid out at anywhere near that level since they are contingent on practices meeting their overall profit targets which are always inflated well beyond what is realistically achievable. But somehow, the front office always gets their bonuses, since they always sandbag their targets
  • Promotions are rare, and the thresholds are set artificially high so as to keep staff running on a treadmill in futile hopes of getting one. Then again, there is no material bump in salary with a change in title
  • Utilization targets (the % of your working capacity that you are expected to be chargeable to a client) are set so high so as to leave no time for you to be trained, take vacation, do practice development, administrative tasks etc.
  • A philosophy of putting you on any project where we may need you, regardless of career fit or geographic location
  • Restrictive travel policies that mean you may have long layovers, multiple connections and cheap hotels.
  • A bureaucracy that would put the government to shame.
  • Oversold projects that put undue stress on staff. Many project managers that can do nothing more than blame staff for failure.
• "Item 4" by "O_Byteme". Full excerpt: Continuing the Gerstner legacy of firing yet another generation of hardworking, highly educated, creative, clever and motivated Americans who gave the company untold years of uncompensated overtime and backbreaking effort so that the executives could become wealthy, whilst moving these workers jobs to India after first forcing them to train their replacements.
• "Bullshit from the inside" by "eyes-wide-open". Full excerpt: As an ex-PWCC partner, I was in numerous meetings, which to my amazement, were focused on screwing the staff. For example, we bell curve people's performance for bonus purposes. The trick was, if times were good, we bell curved broadly - e.g. a whole sector - try and beat that in your little functional practice. I had a long term IBMer crying in my office as she said after all these years, she worked on and helped sell an 8 figure project - only to be bell curved to a sector level and getting a 3 rating (it was a good year in the sector). In the not-so-good times, we would bell curve down to a granular level (e.g. a team of 10 or so) and one person got a bonus. The discussion on what to bell curve was open, and all about how to minimize bonuses. So, if you were in an unpopular area, you suffered through the bad times, with little to no bonus, and then when and if it got hot, we went broad and again you got little to no bonus
• "Here we go again" by "wonderaboutibm". Full excerpt: Looks as though the minor changes in the 2006 bonus plans amount to so much shuffling of the deck chairs. At least the use of the "Growth and Innovation Metric" in bonus calculations is gone -- from an understandability standpoint, that was the ultimate laugher. But the most ludicrous aspect of the bonus calculation remains: percent attainment against "business goals" for income, revenue, etc. Since these goals remain unannounced and presumably top-secret, no one really knows what we are aiming for. All to the better if you are IBM management and you want to dictate what the attainment level will be. Laughable. Truly laughable.

• This just in: Effective April 3rd, CSO in RTP and Atlanta hit with "redeployment". Jobs being sent to Brazil. Employees NOT receiving severance pay and will have to train Brazilian replacements. Affects all brands and bands from National Missions, Maintenance and National Services Support Organization. Please send Alliance@IBM any documentation and number of employees affected to endicottalliance@stny.rr.com from your home computer (IBM is blocking e-mail sent to and from us from inside IBM).
• **Attention!** Anyone that is part of the Qualxserv transition, we need your name. An SSR is in the process of speaking with an attorney about filing a class action suit on behalf of all 300, full time employees. The 100 supplemental employees may be included as well. If anyone has a complete list of SSR's being sold to Qualxserv please send to endicottalliance@stny.rr.com Also contact us if you are interested in a potential suit.
• From the Job Cuts Status & Comments page:
  • Comment 4/11/06: "Central Technical Support" is the IBM Internal 2nd Level Deskside support teams. Currently there is a Northeastern team based out of East Fishkill, a Southern team based out of Jacksonville, and teams for the Central and Western Geographies based out of Markham, Ontario. There's a pilot right now to replace all of these teams with one large CTS team in Bangalore. The team lead for the Northeast USA CTS team was told that she had no choice but to train the Indians, and now that she's done that she has been told that herself and her manager are charged with being personally responsible for the success of this pilot. Failure of the pilot could result in the removal of the US team lead and manager; success will surely mean that the entirety of the US employees will be "resource actioned".
    Some details: Wrapping up training for the CTS India 3 month pilot ended 4/4. The go live date was 4/5 and for the first 5 days of the pilot the agents shadowed a CTS rep in the US for 1/2 of the day (listen in on their calls, remote into their machine to watch, etc) and then in the afternoon take 2 calls each that have been routed from the North mega-queue.
    On 4/12 they will start to receive a regular volume of tickets routed from the North mega-queue, but if we need to send a higher volume to their queue, we may tap into other regions/mega-qs for tickets. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/14/06: It's been 9 months since IBM dumped me, a professional hire who enjoyed working for IBM until 2001 when the terrible treatment began. Every day I dreaded my manager finding a way to cut me down despite winning profitable contracts and "starbursts". I now earn less, work less, have a life, have friends, and a manager who actually offers education, conferences and tells me to get offline when I'm on vacation. For those of you who, like me, didn't find the Alliance until it was too late; you'll find after the tearful, fearful, stressful months of job hunting hoping your family doesn't starve and losing your home, I want to tell you there is life after IBM and a better one too! -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/14/06: I totally agree with the 4/7/06 posting about how being outsourced to IBM has been the most miserable experience of his life. My group was also outsourced and we quickly realized that IBM does not care about any of its employees. The prevailing attitude is one of uncaring. Needless to say we are all searching for new positions outside of IBM. It will take time but eventually we will find new jobs and be motivated and happy once again. I thank the posters to this board for their truthful insights about how lousy a company IBM really is for the workers. -Anonymous-
• From the General Visitor's Comment page:
  • Comment 4/10/06: Network services in Canada is now forced to "work off" their paid vacation and holidays, and even their "Team Spirit Events". It seems IBM is not familiar with the terms "paid vacation" and "paid holiday". Older employees with more vacation have to work more OT. :) Welcome to Sam's World. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/10/06: There are many employees of Indian origin in IBM. They face similar problems related to job security, promotions as any other US employees. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/14/06: I had joined IBM a year and half ago and quit recently to join a competitor. It is SO much better at my new place! Its only after coming here that I truly realized how messed up IBM is. IBM manages by fear and intimidation. There is absolutely no work-life balance here. Working 65-75 hours for very little rewards, no appreciation and management that doesn't really care about you is not the way I want to live my life. -Anonymous-
• Pension Comments page