Welcome to IBM Employee News and Links

New on the Alliance@IBM Site

• Job Cut Reports
  • Comment 8/08/11: I just read Mac Randy's testimony about how IBM is leading the industry in flexible work arrangements, such as work from home. I wonder if anyone told Randy about Software Groups "Back to the Labs" initiative, where IBM is forcing employees to come into work everyday if they live within 50 miles of their assigned lab. -JustRandy-

    Alliance Reply: So you expect Randy to tell the truth and say and do things in the employees interests? Fight for a contract and organize, and stop 'wondering' what Randy or Sammy or any of the Executives are being informed about what is going on, or doing. THEY are the ones that initiate these kinds of 'initiatives". They all know what they are doing. Join the union and fight for a contract. Right now our brothers and sisters in the CWA and IBEW are fighting Verizon. They already have contracts; but the company is trying to take away the things that the contracts protect. The union is out there fighting together. That's what IBMers need to do. Alliance@IBM CWA Local 1701 is 100% in solidarity with the Verizon workers.

  • Comment 8/08/11: Word passed down today to contractors in my part of IGS: 1) NO overtime allowed except for a few pre-approved special cases. 2) Must take 5-days off (unpaid of course) between now and end of Sept. Naturally there can be no impact to the customers. Huh??? How's that work again??? -anonymous-
  • Comment 8/08/11: Heard from a fairly good source that the next RA is scheduled for either the end of September or the second week of October. Sorry, could not get any information on percentage of employees affected or divisions/locations. The source did emanate from SWG. -SammyChopoYourJobo-
  • Comment 8/08/11: The same pay reduction (can't sugarcoat this furlough) just came down through CDI. -anonymous-
  • Comment 8/08/11: Alliance. They just do not get it. Today's IBMer does not understand that every time an RA happens they have less people to organize and less leverage if a strike is needed. Every day that goes by IBM is bringing up offshore sites and the need for, and therefore the leverage that IBM US workers have, dwindles. If the last remaining IBM US worker votes to organize then he or she will have 100 percent of the union vote; but when that one person strikes IBM says, "so what". Less workers means less impact and less leverage in negotiations. What are you waiting for?? -Exodus2007-

    Alliance Reply: We will not give up. We must continue to make it clear that there is no other option. Thanks for your support as always, Exodus2007. We appreciate your comments, too.

  • Comment 8/08/11: Re: -SammyChopoYourJobo- If there is an RA coming, it's most likely Aug. 25th, so they have get people off the books by end of the quarter. re: Greed Sammy Selling stock had nothing to do with RAs. Sammy probably had inside info in the upcoming downgrade of US debt, and knew the market would tank. That's how it works at the highest level. -qtr_century-
  • Comment 8/08/11: Today we were notified that personnel in my division must be at 112% utilization and we must give up our vacation if we are to make that goal. Those who miss 112% utilization (even if this is caused by vacation) will receive a flat, nonnegotiable "3" on their annual evaluation. This is a speedup. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 8/09/11: It's official - Div 7 ITD - OT for non-exempt employees now capped at 2 hours per week max. Contractors also being furloughed for 5 days. -Black N Blue-
  • Comment 8/10/11: Just received word that we may only work 2 hours OT per week, through Sept. 23rd. This comes after record profits, and that 15% pay cut we took awhile back. Div 7 - ITD. -So Done-
  • Comment 8/10/11: I know this is off subject; but please honor and show solidarity for the Verizon land line workers strike. If you are wireless and have Verizon put off any purchases of cell phone services and the like. We are all in this US corporate labor mess together. -we're red-

    Alliance Reply: We do honor and show solidarity to our union brothers & sisters, in CWA. We have also posted a notice on our web page front, with our commitment to Stand with Verizon workers. We encourage everyone to visit www.cwa-union.org and keep updated on our fight. Thank you for notifying IBMers of what it means to fight together.

  • Comment 8/10/11: If you are in ITD Div 7, and your manager's PBC has a "reduce cost" item in it, then an RA is coming to your area. They only have one way to meet this commitment. There was an RA last Nov, then Feb, then May, so most likely one in Aug. -anonymous-
  • Comment 8/11/11: In order to get unemployment benefits for a furlough you generally have to be out of work for 5 consecutive days in (five unpaid days, also known as the "waiting week") or make less than the maximum unemployment rate for the week for the state you work in in order to be able to file a UI claim. IBM knows this. That is why it is only a 5 day furlough for contractors. It would be interesting to see if a contractor is denied a request to take 5 consecutive days furlough ("work week") so there is no chance any UI claim can be filed. If we had a union we can stop atrocities like this. -furloughed-
  • Comment 8/11/11: Many American corporations are watching record profits come in and are sitting on tremendous amounts of cash reserves. They are not hiring. They are not increasing worker pay. In fact, they are reducing the number of employees each quarter and the only ones receiving a cut of the take are the looters at the top of the corporate food chain. IBM is certainly among them. I have no idea what sort of atrocities it would take for American citizens to realize what is being done to them. -Spamwich-
  • Comment 8/12/11: Word is around that contractors in IBM India will soon be in the line of fire. Non performing regulars are also expected to be nailed. No facts or figures are known yet. -BRIC IBMer-
  • Comment 8/13/11: Try this. When the manager tells you to reduce overtime, you tell him that you will eliminate it completely. And then do exactly that. Watch for his response -gadfly-

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

News and Opinion Concerning the "War on the Middle Class"

"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.

• AlterNet: 30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died. By Michael Moore. Excerpts: From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

  Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."

  Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

  And they've succeeded

• New York Times opinion: S&P and the USA. By Paul Krugman. Excerpts: OK, so Standard and Poors has gone ahead with the threatened downgrade. It’s a strange situation. ...

  On the other hand, it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies. The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really?

  Just to make it perfect, it turns out that S&P got the math wrong by $2 trillion, and after much discussion conceded the point — then went ahead with the downgrade.

  In short, S&P is just making stuff up — and after the mortgage debacle, they really don’t have that right. So this is an outrage — not because America is A-OK, but because these people are in no position to pass judgment.

• Wall Street Journal: Rating the Ratings Firms: An 'I' for 'Ignore'. Excerpt: For the last five years, the global economy has been shaken by the proclamations of these conflicted, cartel-like entities. From overrated mortgage-backed securities to sovereign-debt hostage-taking, Fitch, Moody's and S&P have gone from dropping the ball to flexing their institutional power as the market bully. Entrusted with too much power, they have been injudicious in using it. And ,in the case of U.S. debt, their evaluations have smacked of self-serving self-righteousness. The firms put the debt of global corporations and the global economy at risk.
• New York Times editorial: The Truth About Taxes. Excerpts: A week later and we are still amazed at how the Republicans in Congress pulled it off. They held the economy hostage, won some cheap political points, and all of us will spend the next decade paying the ransom as government programs — $900 billion over 10 years in the first round — are slashed and the recovery is put at risk. ...

  A week later and we are even more amazed by the failure of Mr. Obama and the Democratic leadership to stand up to this intransigence. If they do not start pushing back, with the same ferocity, the results will be disastrous. ...

  And while “no new taxes” pledges are almost always big political winners, Americans are also figuring out that the country cannot keep on this way. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, 63 percent support raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year to help address the deficit.

  If that is not enough to energize the White House, here are a few more facts. To avoid across-the-board cuts, Congress must enact at least another $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures over the 10 years. For all of the talk of “big government,” there is no way to cut that much in discretionary programs without crippling basic functions. Lawmakers could eliminate the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pell Grants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and Head Start and still not cut $110 billion annually.

• New York Times editorial: Race to the Right. Excerpts: It is far too simplistic to blame the loose coalition of Republicans known as the Tea Party for the debt-limit debacle. It was not the Tea Party fringe of the Republican Party that dragged the economy to the brink — it was its center. The party has moved so far to the right that there is little difference between fringe and mainstream.

  Through a combination of fear and fervor, Republican leaders in Congress and in the presidential campaign have lined up behind a radical new strategy in which all major decisions are made under threat — to shut the government in April, to implode the economy in July, to cut off money for the Federal Aviation Administration in August. Party leaders have said they will do this again and again, in perpetuity. ...

  This rightward flood tide has also picked up most of the Republican presidential field. Considering what a clear triumph the final bill was for the Republicans, cutting $2.4 trillion in spending without a dime of new tax revenue, at least a few candidates would logically have supported it. Only Jon Huntsman, however, has spoken up for it. The rest said they found it insufficiently ruthless, fearing a primary loss if they seemed the slightest bit soft.

• New York Times opinion: What Happened to Obama? Excerpts: When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

  In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

  “I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.”

  A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative — and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it — would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit — a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

  And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

• Smirking Chimp: Obama: It Became Necessary to Destroy the Economy to Save It. By Bob Burnett. Excerpts: First, Washington politicians do not understand how the U.S. economy works. It's not that complicated: a robust economy depends upon steady consumption by average Americans, not millionaires and billionaires. Working folks aren't consuming because they either don't have the money or are saving it because they are fearful. These Americans aren't going to spend more because the debt crisis got resolved. They are worried about their jobs and the jobs of family members and friends. They understand the debt-limit crisis had nothing to do with jobs and that Washington pols don't get it. That's why average Americans are pissed off at both Parties. ...

  The Republicans have a wrong-headed but consistent message: reduce taxes and government and the economy will magically blossom. The Reagan and Bush years demonstrate this ideology is BS, but there is no countervailing message because the Obama Administration is lost. If the president really believed the number one problem facing America was jobs he would have refused to negotiate with Republicans when they manufactured the debt limit crisis; Obama should have said, "This has nothing to do with creating jobs and will make the economy worse. Congress, get to work on America's real problems!" ...

  We've now seen at least five examples where Obama had an opportunity to make a real difference and lost it by being overly accommodating: the amount of the original stimulus, whether or not to break up "too-big-to-fail" banks, health care, the federal budget crisis, and the debt crisis. (It's probably true that the president caved to the military on Afghanistan, but we don't know as much about that negotiation.) In the debt crisis negotiation, Republicans got what they wanted because the president was soft. ...

  It didn't have to be like this. President Obama had two opportunities to call the Republicans' bluff and chose not to. In December he could have refused to sign any budget deal that did not include ending the egregious tax cuts for millionaires and raising the debt ceiling. On August 2nd, he could have refused to sign a debt-limit agreement that did not include new revenues. In both cases he could have dared the Republicans to shut down the economy. The bottom line for Liberals: we're on our own. It's naïve to expect help from President Obama. The economy will continue to spiral downward and Liberals will have to figure out how to save it.

• Smirking Chimp: How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade. By Dean Baker. Excerpts: Standard and Poor's downgrade of U.S. government debt captured headlines across the country and around the world. It is a newsworthy event, but primarily as another colossal failure by a major credit rating agency.

  First, it is worth mentioning the important background here. S&P, along with the other credit rating agencies, rated hundreds of billions of dollars of subprime mortgage backed securities as investment grade. They were paid tens of millions of dollar by the investment banks for these ratings. We know that concerns were raised by their own people about the quality of many of these issues. This was at the least astoundingly incompetent. It was quite possibly criminal. ...

  Finally, what does the risk of default on U.S. government debt mean? The debt is issued in dollars. That means it is payable in dollars. The U.S. government prints dollars. This means that if for some reason the government was unable to tax or borrow to raise the money to pay its debt then it could always print it. This may carry a risk of inflation, but S&P is not in the business of making inflation predictions, they are in the business of assessing the likelihood that debt will be repaid. (Of course if they are worried that inflation will erode the value of U.S. debt, S&P would also have to downgrade all debt denominated in dollars everywhere in the world.) In short, there is no coherent explanation that can be given for S&P's downgrade. This downgrade was not made based on the economics. We can only speculate about the true motive.

• Good Magazine: Must See Chart: Tax Breaks for the Rich Versus Budget Cuts. By Liz Dwyer. Excerpts: Need a stark breakdown of just why it is that attacks on public employees in Wisconsin and beyond are striking such a nerve? Take a look at this chart from the Center for American Progress comparing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy to budget cuts to 10 social safety net programs.

  

  Combine this visual depiction of our supposed "shared sacrifices" and "painful cuts" with the extremes of wealth and poverty our culture editor, Cord, shared yesterday—how the 400 wealthiest Americans are now richer than the bottom 50 percent of citizens—and it's not hard to understand why people are protesting.

• New York Times op-ed: Win Together or Lose Together. By Thomas L. Friedman. Excerpts: In the wake of the hugely disappointing budget deal and the S.& P.’s debt downgrade, maybe we need to hang a new sign in the immigration arrival halls at all U.S. ports and airports. It could simply read: “Welcome. You are entering the United States of America. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.”

  Because our country is now finding itself in the worst kind of decline — a slow decline, just slow enough for us to keep deluding ourselves that nothing really fundamental needs to change if our future is to match our past. ...

  Regarding growth, we surely need a much smarter long-term fiscal plan than the one that just came out of Washington. We need to cut spending in areas and on a time schedule that will hurt the least; we need to raise taxes in ways that will hurt the least (now is the perfect time for a gasoline tax rather than payroll taxes); and we need to use some of these revenues to invest in the pillars of our growth, with special emphasis on infrastructure, research and incentives for risk-taking and start-ups. We need to offer every possible incentive to get Americans to start new businesses to grow out of this hole.

• New York Times op-ed: Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt. By Paul Krugman. Excerpts: To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.

  Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

  America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

  Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.

  So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?

• Huffington Post: Obama's Tipping Point. By Cenk Uygur. Excerpt: I have been saying for a long time now that President Obama is the world's worst negotiator and has absolutely no interest in fighting for progressive principles. I didn't make this up out of the whole cloth. I voted for the guy and I desperately wanted him to succeed. But my job is to cover politics and when you cover Obama all you see is him running for cover. ...

  How did he not see that the Republicans would bludgeon him with the lack of jobs after he agreed to their spending cuts -- which would only lower the number of jobs in the country? How could anyone not see that and think they know anything about politics?

• Smirking Chimp: Loopholes for Assholes. By Stephen Pizzo. Excerpts: The right wing propaganda machine reminds us at every turn that they are not called "The Rich." They are called "The Job Creators." (You know, like God The Creator, that kinda thing. ) And like God, we are supposed to treat them with not only reverence, but gratitude -- gratitude for all they have done and, supposedly will do, for us.

  But their largess is, of course, conditional. Should we require of them anything, especially a small portion of their wealth for the nation that made them rich -- ah, sorry, I mean, made them "job creators" -- well, then they will turn their backs on us. There will be no jobs for you, you ingrates!

  I hope you're all clear on this, goddammit. Because these job creators are busy folks. They travel a lot, to places where they are indeed creating jobs, like China and the Marshall Islands and such. There they have plenty of folks happy to reward them for their largess -- with more largess, in the form of dirt-low taxes and even dirtier and lower environmental standards, or as they call them, "job killing regulations."

• Christian Science Monitor: What can Congress do to create jobs? Five Republican proposals.
• Christian Science Monitor: What can Congress do to create jobs? Five Democratic proposals.
• AlterNet: 6 So-Called "Job Creators" Who Won't Hire The Unemployed. Allstate Insurance, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and the University of Arizona are just a few of the companies advertising that they will only hire people who already have jobs. By Nathan Birnbaum. Excerpts: As President Obama hits the road on his jobs agenda bus tour, millions of individuals trying to re-enter the job market, seeking to eke out a modest living so that they too can live the American Dream – or what’s left of it anyway – are stuck in a rut. They write hundreds of cover letters, perfect their interview techniques and network like crazy, but sometimes the barriers are too high.

  What some may not know is that a number of employers, including household-name companies, have taken the position that the unemployed should forget about obtaining a job altogether.

  Log on to any jobs site, do a quick search and the results may surprise you: slews of job ads are essentially warning the out-of-work that they worthless and disposable. Welcome to 21st Century, post-Recession hiring discrimination: where you must be an “employed or recently employed” person to get a job.

  Yes, for those individuals who make up the 9.1 percent unemployed in the United States, many laid off through no fault of their own, misfortune is a disqualifier. Numerous employers, staffing agencies and online job posting firms have adopted policies that explicitly deny employment to the unemployed. And they don’t even try to cover up their intent. The language in the qualification requirement sections of the ads leave nothing to the imagination: “currently employed,” “must be currently employed,” “currently employed on a permanent basis,” “must be currently or recently employed” etc. If you are none of the above, as 14 million Americans are, you’re out of luck.

• AlterNet: The 'Super Congress' Is a Scam Designed to Force Cuts To Popular Programs And Keep Taxes On The Rich Low. Ignore all the process stories about the vaunted Gang of 12 -- here's how the endgame plays out. By Joshua Holland. Excerpts: In the months ahead, we're going to be treated to an endless parade of process stories about the Gang of 12 “super congress” that emerged from the debt ceiling deal. Each time a staffer leaks some bit of trivia about the internal machinations of this opaque committee, the Beltway media will write a flurry of stories about it, lawmakers will signal whether they might support this provision or that one and the pundits will sift through the tea leaves trying to predict whether this time the kind of “grand bargain” the Washington Post editorial board lusts after will finally come to pass.

  It will all be a piece of Kabuki theater. The way this deal ends is fairly easy to predict – it's a set-up that will result in fairly deep cuts to domestic spending, won't raise taxes on the wealthy and will leave “defense” spending largely untouched – a process that will force cuts to important public services.

• AlterNet: Meet the Global Financial Elites Controlling $46 Trillion In Wealth. The economic elite have at least $46 trillion in wealth – but who are they? We look at the people and the industries picking the pockets of the working class. By David DeGraw. Excerpts: While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90 percent of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion hidden in offshore accounts. In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population. ...

  If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225 percent increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade. ...

  Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076 percent of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009.