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• IBM: The information services company that refuses to divulge information. Excerpts: It is ironic that a company that advertises itself as an information services company and wants to build a smarter planet refuses to divulge crucial information and wants the planet kept in the dark. But that is the case with IBM. Take job cuts. Last year IBM cut an estimated 10,400 jobs. This information came from Resource Action documents sent to the Alliance. The true number, which is probably higher, is only known to corporate executives. On March 1st another 2900 jobs were cut. Probably higher. Once again only IBM knows the true number and appears to be violating the intent of the WARN Act.

  The jobs were cut all across the United States and some in Canada. What locations and communities had job cuts? Nobody knows because IBM no longer gives out that information. Now IBM has decided that it will no longer inform employees, the government, communities, the media, or stockholders how many employees work at IBM in the United States.

  From now on only the global headcount number will be reported. It is clear why IBM is doing this. The US employee population is shrinking due to off shoring. IBM is also displacing US workers with foreign workers (at lower pay) brought in to work on US client accounts. Meanwhile headcount in India and other countries is increasing.

  In fact, IBM India had an employee population of 94,000 in 2008. At the end of 2009 IBM USA had an employee population of 105,000, down 30,000 in just a few years. But with IBM no longer giving out headcount by country we will not know when IBM USA goes below IBM India in headcount. Is this important?

• To Alliance@IBM supporters: The Alliance is the only organization that advocates and supports IBM employees and ex-employees. In fact, there are few like it in the Information Technology field. It is always difficult to keep an organization like this alive, but as a supporter you know how important it is that we exist. We are calling on you today to help keep us alive another year by joining as a member or associate member. See our online forms below. As our membership has dropped, it is imperative that we gain new members or this organization and web site will cease to exist. Help us keep our organizing and advocacy work alive!
• General Visitor Comments: Due to a lack of membership growth the comment sections will be closed until we see sufficient growth in full membership, associate membership or donations. Many of you that visit our site have not yet joined, but seem to value its existence. The only comment section that will remain open will be Job Cuts Reports. If you have information that you want the Alliance to know about please send to ibmunionalliance@gmail.com. Information of importance will be put on the front page of this web site. To join go here: Join The Alliance! or here: Join The Alliance!
• Tell-A-Friend! Take action! IBM must employ US workers on ALL Government contracts! Pass your message on to your friends and colleagues, and invite them to sign up for Alliance@IBM.
• Job Cut Reports
  • Comment 4/01/10: IBM MBPS eliminates positions without replacing the person. This does not mean the person RAed was not needed. It is just that IBM figures they can risk not replacing the person and hope "all continues okay with what resources left" to make sure the job gets done. This is fact. My former job was never back filled as a server administrator. The servers, though, remain running unsupported and unadministered: unattended. I bet other IBM divisions or LOBs do the same. I bet IBM customers wonder what is really going on. Well this practice is going on. I figure they should know. -da_facts-
  • Comment 4/02/10: I got mail from my manager that I have been identified for RA ,the termination date being June 30th.Does that mean I am RAed with effect from June 30th or I am in the RA ed list from March 31st itself when I got this info. I am in the GBS. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/02/10: My last day was 4/1 after 33 years. My manager told me on 3/2 and I did not hear another word from him. I finally called HR and asked about an exit interview, where to hand in my laptop, badge, etc. He finally left a message for me. Guess the hardest part was leaving without any human interaction. All my retirement stuff was handled over an 800 number. The only people still left in my location/productivity center that I cared to say goodbye to were the security guard and mailroom staff. They all cried...guess more are leaving than I even knew. Yes, I was very angry at first. Now, I'm looking forward to finding something else and making IBM pay for their actions. Not the best attitude but our leadership has devolved to the point where its laughable to be seen as a US based company! Sam is something like the third highest paid exec and his success comes at our expense. Time to move on. -Gone but not unhappy-
  • Comment 4/03/10: Royally unhappy here! My role was made redundant and offshored in February....although i was told i had unlimited time to search, on the bench for another role. Have since been dumped in a temporary role getting told it was one thing and am now sinking. My Manager asked me was a redundancy something that i would ever "consider".....i have since been told that severance pay in Australia has been FURTHER reduced to 2 weeks per year of service and then only 1 week for the remainder. Does anyone have any idea whether this is true or how redundancy payouts are calculated in Australia? -sydneyworker-
  • Comment 4/03/10: I heard a rumor that IBM is going to keep abusing employees. Firing them whenever they feel like it. Taking away benefits and overcharging for the few remaining until the employees band together in a union to stop them or the company folds in America whichever comes first. I first heard this rumor in 1999. So far it has been true. -Exodus2007-
  • Comment 4/04/10: I was a victim of the March 1st Resource Actions. 3 in my department. Yet, my manager had 3 open hiring tickets out, on the Global Opportunities Marketplace. My title: Channels Technical Sales Specialist -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/04/10: -Marked-, if IBM can hire someone with a lower up-front cost to replace you, they will. You are never safe. With a contract, you could be safer. We're losing two and gaining more than that in other geographies. -CDI_Drone-
  • Comment 4/05/10: According to Blue Pages, US employee counts decreased by 3390 between 3/1 and 4/4. So, I think your estimates as to how many were laid off in this last round were low. -Anonymous- Alliance reply: Thanks for this information. We went by the numbers on resource action packages we received. Obviously we did not get all of them.
  • Comment 4/05/10: Dues paying Alliance member here. Just noticed that Forbes named Sammy one of the "30 Best CEOs". Their only metric seemed to be (not surprisingly) Earnings Per Share. Guess this will reinforce to Sammy and his band of thieves their overinflated opinions of themselves, and confirm their conviction they are doing the right thing by offshoring the company. -Gone in 96-
  • Comment 4/05/10: Jobs cut on Disney account. IBM moving work to India. -anon- Alliance Reply: Do you know how many jobs were cut? Do you know the division? Do you know the location?
  • Comment 4/05/10: TO: IB eMbarassed et al.: Exit dates can be extended for non-business reasons too. My exit date was extended from 3/31 to 4/7 simply because I was on vacation when the RA was announced and could not be reached. No impact on severance or other terms as far as I can tell. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 4/05/10: Just warning those who were RA'ed in 3/1 you might want to check your bennies... they shut everyone off on 3/31 without telling you anything... The only way for you to make sure you have coverage is to call into the ESC and talk to them to reinstate your bennies.. Its not seamless... and it is slimy what they did... only way I found out was a friend told me when he checked.. I called and they dropped me... -Screwed and Tattooed-
  • Comment 4/05/10: Never been happier. Always a top performer for 6 solid years with ratings of 1 to 2+ never lower and this is how they repay you. I sleep better and wake up clear headed. I am sure of getting a job soon and not having to work at crappy IBM where IDIOTS BECOME MANAGERS and now it should be renamed as INDIAN BUSINESS MACHINES. BTW, I am INDIAN. -terminated-
  • Comment 4/06/10: Attention front line managers whose employees are off-shore. It won't be long now until managers are trained in China and India to take your place. If engineering employees are cheaper in India and China, management is cheaper too. -Peter ClearCase-
  • Comment 4/08/10: I posted a comment yesterday in the Bob Evans article yesterday. They were not posted, although subsequent posts have appeared. I am thinking it is heavily edited with some mildly opposing viewpoints permitted to give an impression of a balanced view. My posting was along these lines:

    "IBM is projecting a false financial situation and going on resource actioning valuable employees. A honesty about the financial situation will help. In the Toronto lab, during the past one year, IBM has eliminated colour printer, cut the number of BW printers by 1/3, eliminated OT, eliminating pager pay, no pay raise even for those youngsters who are coming off probation, no Christmas lunches, telephone calls are being monitored with login id, minimal AC, almost anything that can be cut is being cut.

    Can this be an indicator of a well managed company. If Sam were a good executive he would come clean with employees and explore ways to rectify the situation. Instead thousand of valuable employees are being resource actioned indiscriminately by poor managers. IBM's future is being mortgaged by Sam for immediate benefit to him and all those with stick options."

    Now I know in US many of the cited items were gone a while ago but I do not wish to insult anyone. Plus this is something that we in Canada feel the loss immensely. -IBM Canada-

  • Comment 4/08/10: Received my separation notice 8 days after my exit interview. My ex-manager did not have it ready at my exit interview. Also, after getting the notice by Fed Ex. Saw that my ex-manager did not enter the"DOL account number". Contacted my ex-manager for the information. Now being ignored. -Anonymous-

  Editor's note: Many more job cut comments resulting from the March 1st firings are available in the highlights from these weeks:

  • 6 March, 2010
  • 13 March, 2010
  • 20 March, 2010
  • 27 March, 2010
  • 3 April, 2010

News and Opinion Concerning Health Savings Accounts, Medical Costs and Health Care Reform

News and Opinion Concerning the U.S. Financial Crisis

"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.

• New York Times op-ed: Making Financial Reform Fool-Resistant. By Paul Krugman. Excerpts: The White House is confident that a financial regulatory reform bill will soon pass the Senate. I’m not so sure, given the opposition of Republican leaders to any real reform. But in any case, how good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut? Not good enough. It’s a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy’s health. ...

  I know that getting such things into the bill would be hard politically: as financial reform legislation moves to the floor of the Senate, there will be pressure to make it weaker, not stronger, in the hope of attracting Republican votes. But I would urge Senate leaders and the Obama administration not to settle for a weak bill, just so that they can claim to have passed financial reform. We need reform with a fighting chance of actually working.

• New York Times op-ed: Throw Out Skybox Tax Subsidies. By Richard Schmalbeck and Jay Soled. Excerpts: Until the 1970s, Major League Baseball was a populist sport. Bleacher seats cost as little as a dollar, meaning middle- or even working-class fans could afford to take their families to a game a few times each season. But in the years since, tickets to baseball games — along with other professional sports events — have skyrocketed in cost. Over the last two decades, the average ticket price for a Chicago Cubs game has increased 265 percent, more than four times the inflation rate. Add in parking, concessions and souvenirs, and a family trip to one of this week’s opening day games could easily cost a few hundred dollars.

  There are many reasons for the price explosion, but a critical factor has been the ability of businesses to write off tickets as entertainment expenses — essentially a huge, and wholly unnecessary, government subsidy. These deductions have led to higher ticket prices in two ways. On the demand side, they have fueled competition for scarce seats, with business taxpayers bidding in part with dollars they save through the deductions. On the supply side, the large number of businesses bidding for expensive seats has driven the expansion of luxury skyboxes and a reduction in overall seats in new ballparks. ...

  Ideally, Congress would get rid of business-entertainment deductions altogether — after all, they are little more than an excuse for corporate executives to consume luxury items at a discount, distorting markets and cheating the public out of substantial tax revenue. Given corporate America’s passionate attachment to sports-related perks, a blanket elimination may be unrealistic, though. A more feasible but still effective approach would be to limit deductions for luxury skybox tickets to a low, fixed amount — say, $50 per seat, per game. Such a limit would be fair, unambiguous and easy to enforce. But above all, it would help baseball return to its roots, when average folks — not corporate entertainers — were the ones filling the seats.

• Wall Street Journal: Traders Beat Wall Street CEOs in Pay. By Stephen Grocer and Aaron Lucchetti. Excerpt: Many Wall Street chief executives took a big pay cut for 2009. But their real value may have been in deflecting attention from their troops—who enjoyed the largest collective payday on record. Across Wall Street, leading firms paid out $140 billion in compensation and benefits, the highest number in history, based on a final tally of the pay disclosures at 38 financial-services firms. That figure, which was projected earlier by The Wall Street Journal, represented an increase from $123 billion earned by financial professionals in 2008 and $137 billion in 2007.
• Jim Hightower: A Public Official Who Stands For Us! Full excerpt: The first thing you need to know about Elizabeth Warren is that the big shots of Wall Street despise her. And isn't that refreshing?! Again and again, grassroots America has had to watch in dismay and disgust as our Washington officials (both Republicans and Democrats) have rushed to pat the hands and soothe the fevered brows of the very banksters who stole the American dream from millions of ordinary folks. Isn't anyone on our side?

  Meet Ms. Warren, presently the head of an independent agency set up by Congress to monitor the government bailout of Wall Street bankers. "Dang gummit," she says in her Oklahoma twang, "somebody has to stand on behalf of middle-class families." Not only has she been doing that by fearlessly grilling Gucci-clad bankers and weak-willed treasury officials, but also by conceiving of and pushing hard for a new regulatory agency that would protect us consumers against banker greed. Wall Street profiteers shudder in fear at the very mention of Warren's proposal for a totally-independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and they're lobbying ferociously to kill it and demonize her.

  Coming from a working class family, she knows what it is to face financial crisis and feel the crushing power of uncaring banks. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people," she recently told the New York Times. Despite her success as a lawyer, she hasn't forgotten her populist roots and purpose. Warren is Wall Street's worst nightmare: a middle-class champion who gives a damn about workaday people, is smart and tenacious – and can't be bought. Arrogant and avaricious bankers are right to fear her, and we're right to be cheered by her advocacy. To support Warren's push for a real consumer agency, call Americans for Financial Reform: 202-263-4533.

• New York Times: The Well-Off Are Spending Again — but Carefully. By Geraldine Fabrikant. Excerpts: The wealthy are cautiously opening their wallets again. “People are fed up, and they want to have a good time,” said Rina Anoussi, a Manhattan travel agent who handles high-end clients. They don’t want Italy 101. They want more exotic destinations like Kenya and Tanzania.” ...

  Business is also creeping back for hotels, yacht rental companies, jet brokers and jewelry stores — purveyors of the luxury goods that once seemed immune to a downturn but then took a megahit with the economy.

  “Everybody has cut back somewhat,” Ms. Webster said. “Even people who rented a 225-foot boat are saying, ‘Can I get something that is 50 feet shorter?’ “

Vault Message Board Posts

Vault's IBM Business Consulting Services message board is a popular hangout for IBM BCS employees, including many employees acquired from PwC. Sample posts follow:

• "Raises are effective 7/1" by "bigbertha92". Full excerpt: Don't expect a raise if you're a 2 performer. Only top contributors (1 & 2+) will receive a raise. The raise will most likely be around 1%. No kidding. Executives are not getting raises this year.
• "IBM Just don't get it" by " Toa". Full excerpt: If you get the same money for a half ar*ed effort as you do for a good effort then why bother trying to do a good job! I've even seen 2+ being downgraded to a 2 because the manager didn't believe the 2+ was valid.
• "Let's Go Global!" by "bigbertha92". Excerpts: Everything is "global" - from EO training to forced-by-mgmt-to-take IBM learning courses. Learn when no means yes, how not to be offensive, and watch slang!

  We all have to play nice-nice with our GR (global resource) peers. and when your GR team lead sends notes to IBM US mgmt that they need MORE WORK from their US counterparts, IBM mgmt. rolls over and gives them more work. Reminds me of an old CCR song: Fortunate Son.

  And when you ask them, how much should we give? Ooh, they only answer more! more! more. What a sad, pathetic, f'ng company.

• "The Truth Can't Be Told" by "Frank_Reality". Full excerpt: Yes, even though the GRs in India can't handle simple tasks on time, with adequate quality and within cost, they are given more and more responsibility they cannot begin to handle. And of course when they screw up and fail as often happens, it's always the US teams' fault. It is pathetic (and clueless) to reward this incompetence with more work and more responsibilities.

  What's more pathetic is how India is not held accountable since they are Sam's chosen ones and how anyone who reports problems with India are considered anti-team, racist and uncooperative.

  The sacred cows over in India aren't cattle, they're the "office boys" pretending to be IT professionals working for IBM. What a sad, pathetic f'ng company indeed.