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Highlights—January 3, 2009

  • AARP Bulletin Today: Giving Peace a Chance: A growing number of older Americans are signing up for the Peace Corps. By Robert Schlesinger. Excerpts: Marie Shockley heard the call in 1961, when John F. Kennedy challenged a generation to change the world and, within two months of his inauguration, called for a Peace Corps to advance "the great common cause of world development." There would be marriage, two children, divorce, a career as a civil servant and retirement before Shockley could say, "Dream fulfilled."

    Shockley, now 67, is one of a growing number of retirees and other older Americans who enlist in the Peace Corps, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. In 1966, 135 of 15,556 Peace Corps volunteers—less than 1 percent—were 50 years of age or older. As of September, 435 of its 7,810 volunteers—nearly 6 percent—were 50 or older. ...

    While age is often seen as a drawback in U.S. workplaces, it can be a big plus in other countries, say David Arnoldy and Linda Lee, who returned home to St. Paul, Minn., in June after a two-year stint in Ukraine. "In their culture, as opposed to ours, people with gray hair are seen to be wise and more respected," Arnoldy says. At the time they volunteered, she was 52 and he 58. During Arnoldy's 20 years in the technology business, he had started and sold three companies—experience that proved valuable in teaching "Essentials of Entrepreneurship" in Ukraine. Lee, who'd retired early from a career in the corporate world, worked on a business management project sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development. ...

    Since returning, Shockley has given speeches about her experiences in the Peace Corps. As for volunteering, "it's a good idea for people to do it after they retire," she says. "A lot of people especially are retiring earlier, and they have their health." Adds Arnoldy: "It was one of the most rewarding things we've done, and it gave us some very, very fresh perspectives to think about old things in a new way."

  • Forbes: Jack D. Kuehler, key IBM executive, dies at 76. Excerpt: Jack D. Kuehler, an electrical engineer who became the highest ranking technologist at IBM and served as the company's vice chairman during the 1980s when IBM dominated the global high-tech industry, has died. He was 76. Kuehler died Saturday as a result of complications from Parkinson's disease in Rancho Santa Fe, his daughter Christi Kuehler Chappell said Thursday.
News and Opinion Concerning Health Savings Accounts, Medical Costs and Health Care Reform
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  • No new news this week!
News and Opinion Concerning the U.S. Financial Crisis
Minimize "It is a restatement of laissez-faire-let things take their natural course without government interference. If people manage to become prosperous, good. If they starve, or have no place to live, or no money to pay medical bills, they have only themselves to blame; it is not the responsibility of society. We mustn't make people dependent on government- it is bad for them, the argument goes. Better hunger than dependency, better sickness than dependency."

"But dependency on government has never been bad for the rich. The pretense of the laissez-faire people is that only the poor are dependent on government, while the rich take care of themselves. This argument manages to ignore all of modern history, which shows a consistent record of laissez-faire for the poor, but enormous government intervention for the rich." From Economic Justice: The American Class System, from the book Declarations of Independence by Howard Zinn.

  • Jim Hightower: Let's Bust Wall Street Bank Robbers. Full excerpt: On September 19, Ryan Mueller was sentenced in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to six years in prison for stealing $20 from a toddler’s piggy bank.

    Think how much better things would have gone for him had his name been Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, or any of the other monikers of the high-flying Wall Street investment banks. These institutional street thugs have robbed the piggy banks of millions of American homeowners. Yet, only two days after Ryan Mueller's conviction, Treasury secretary Henry Paulson went running after the Wall Street Gang – not to arrest them, but to cover their wrongdoing with a $700-billion bailout.

    That’s more than $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in our land – victims being forced to pay the perpetrators of a legalized theft that has wrecked the housing market, eliminated thousands of jobs, and sent our economy into a deep tailspin.

    Paulson (formerly a Wall Street Banking honcho, himself) wanted what he called “a clean” bailout bill. In other words, an 11-or-12-figure transfer of wealth from us to them, with no strings attached – no punishment for the scofflaws who were in charge, no help for homeowners who got robbed, no protection for taxpayers, and no re-regulation to keep the kleptocrats from repeating their grand larceny.

    Bush & Company has had to choke down a huge serving of ideological crow here. He and his laizzes-faire wrecking crew forced this jerry-rigged system of “Yee-Haw!” capitalism on America, and now they want socialism to clean up their disaster.

    The Bushites tell us we have no choice, for these giants are “too big to fail.” Well – hello – if that’s so, it’s time to break them up, not make them even bigger and fewer. Let’s put a little competition in the system, so America does not remain at the mercy of a handful of financial greedheads and boneheads.

New on the Alliance@IBM Site
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  • From an e-mail sent to Alliance@IBM members: Happy New Year to all our members, associate members and subscribers. Our new officers and chapter reps elected by the dues paying members in the November election are listed below.

    New officers 2009 to 2012:

    • Tom Midgley / President (Poughkeepsie)
    • Earl Mongeon / Vice President (Burlington)
    • Jim Mangi / Secretary (Southbury)
    • Rick White / Treasurer (Endicott)

    New chapter reps:

    • Bill Costine / Fishkill Rep
    • Lee Conrad / Endicott Rep
    • Jeff Houseman / Burlington Rep
    • Bill McGreevy / Southbury Rep
    • Fran Pflug / RTP Rep
    • Helen Domaratz-Ting/ Boulder
    • Linda Guyer / Rep At-Large, Software
    • Steve Gellis / At-Large, NJ
    • Andy Mayer / At-Large, Calif.

  • Job Cuts Status & Comments page
    • Comment 1/01/08: Reply to -screwed for sure-: oh yeah, if you were close (but not that close - say 2 or 3 years) to retirement eligibility, you were definitely a target, regardless of excellent performance and ratings, particularly if you were on the old pension plan (at least before the freezing of that plan) - I was RA'd in 2005 at age 52 with 23 years, and have heard of MANY similar cases. I'm not quite sure (with the freezing of the old plan) to what degree this is still true; the only economic incentives for this targeting now as far as I know would be salary inflation and retirement medical benefits? -targeted-
    • Comment 1/02/08: rumors of mfg in Rochester, MN being sold to Geodis... time will tell!!?? -homerj-
    • Comment 1/02/08: To Wondering--LTS employees let go (like I was) was called into the mgr's office, told some bogus reason--given 10 minutes to pack my stuff, and out the door---hope that helps your situation. -Gone-n-forgotten-
    • Comment 1/02/08: Listen.. I work for the SEC and I can confirm the layoffs for Jan. 23 for at least IBM. I don't have clearance but I did manage to take a look at a document confirming this. IBM is not 100% sure; but the fact that we have already been notified of these cuts means there's a good chance the layoffs will go through. F.Y.I., I'm at a library computer. -Tipster-
    • Comment 1/02/08: DEEP CUTS EXPECTED AT BTV!!!! Jan 23 is the date. Ditoro cutting 100's of jobs. Very few spared. So Sad. Goal is to cut costs. BTV has very little work. Good luck to all. -Anon-
    • Comment 1/02/08: the back end of the line temps were let go today, guess some of the rumors are starting to come true, ibmers will also run security at the gates and cleaning everything but the bathrooms, WOW what next? -btver-
    • Comment 1/03/08: To dia: only problem with your discussion of what you would do if CEO, is that IBM is NOT doing any of those things. They used to in the past but no longer. IBM is not the leader in anything anymore. All you have to do is look at the revenues from HP, Dell and Microsoft to see IBM does not lead in HW, nor SW. IBM can't get the best people anymore, who would want to work for IBM if you could work from Google, Yahoo, or a start up? Gerstner made sure that IBM no longer pays above average, so you get what you pay for. They only way IBM gets good people now is to buy the company and then pay huge retention packages for a few years until everyone bails. Layoffs are incredibly detrimental to morale and the fact that IBM continues rolling layoffs every quarter shows how little they care about employee morale. The ranking system ensures that there is no teaming, since everyone in a department is competing for the ratings curve. It is a very sad state of business from what the company used to be. -anonymous-
    • Comment 1/03/08: There are so many different divisions, locations, and brands that it is too difficult to determine if any potential layoff will be "your" group or not. To me, the point is, if you make it through this time, you still will have to live with the stress of "waiting" for the next one. I'm an old-timer and will be leaving shortly. My advice to the younger employees is to do your job and be looking for another one with another company., There is no longer any reason to have loyalty to a company that doesn't return it. Good luck to everyone. -Veteran-
  • General Visitor's Comment page
  • Pension Comments page
  • Raise and Salary Comments
  • PBC Comments
  • International Comments
Vault Message Board Posts
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Vault's IBM Business Consulting Services message board is a popular hangout for IBM BCS employees, including many employees acquired from PwC.

If you hire good people and treat them well, they will try to do a good job. They will stimulate one another by their vigor and example. They will set a fast pace for themselves. Then if they are well led and occasionally inspired, if they understand what the company is trying to do and know they will share in its sucess, they will contribute in a major way. The customer will get the superior service he is looking for. The result is profit to customers, employees, and to stcckholders. —Thomas J. Watson, Jr., from A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas That Helped Build IBM.

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