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• Job Cut Reports
  • Comment 12/05/11: "By the way, can you imagine if retiree's occupied the area around corporate headquarters in Armonk until they got a raise in pensions?" I can imagine a bunch of dead retirees frozen and starved to death waiting till hell freezes over for a raise from the cheap bastards at IBM. The only way retirees will see any kind of a decent raise or affordable benefits again is if the union gets voted in and negotiates it on their behalf. IBM management didn't even send retirees a copy of the 100 year anniversary book that they were a huge part of. That's how IBM shows its appreciation to us. -Exodus2007-
  • Comment 12/10/11: On your home page list of USA employee count by year, it would be interesting to show that there were 405,000 workers in 1985 (per the below link to "the-biggest-corporate-layoffs-all-time"). I would assume most of the nearly half million employees were in the USA, Canada, and Europe pre-globalization, and the massive layoffs through the years would have affected these countries. It is especially haunting that the USA count has dropped from some part of the nearly half a million workers, even if perhaps half that was in the USA, to about 95,000. -anonymous-

    Alliance Reply: It is possible that IBM reported the US population of IBMers, during the 1980's, in some news article that has been archived or referenced. Other than that, Alliance@IBM may have referenced those numbers in our "History of Organizing IBM" section of our web site, when we were part the IBM Workers United organization from 1976-1999. The flyers are not listed chronologically.

  • Comment 12/10/11: to -jaggua- if you were there in 93 you would have understood why this happened. It was do or die so look at the big comeback of the company. Just a little misleading. -wrong number-
  • Comment 12/10/11: To -wrong number-: I was there in 1993. BAD executive decisions on RENT vs SELL, with bad executive decisions on how to utilize the SOLD machinery income and a big lack of knowledge on how to work the press cause the "paper" loses. Today IBM has a much worse cash to debt ratio and is technically insolvent, "BUT" IBM manipulates the press and the presentation (or lack of presentation) of facts and numbers to have the company riding high in the eyes of investors. -no_ky-
  • Comment 12/10/11: What happened in 1993 can not be compared to what is happening now. IBM layoffs in the past few years have happened despite record profits. Employees are no longer retrained - they are just discarded. Respect for the individual exists only in small pockets. However this problem is broader than IBM. A good part of the industry is afflicted with the same short term thinking. -HappyFormerIBMer-

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

• National Public Radio: Insurance Brokers' Fees Won't Count As A Health Care Expense. By Julie Appleby. Excerpts: The Obama administration ruled today that fees paid to health insurance brokers and agents won't count as medical care expenses, under limits imposed on insurers in the 2010 federal health law.

  That decision, in one of the regulations for implementing the health overhaul, is sure to disappoint insurance agents, as you might have guessed. But it's more important than you might have imagined.

  Here's why. Under the federal health law, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of the money they get through premiums on medical care and quality improvement. Of looked at another way, administrative costs can't exceed 20 percent. If they do, the insurers have to give rebates to consumers. For insurers of large groups, the target is 85 percent, or no more than 15 percent on administrative costs.

  Brokers had lobbied hard to have their fees included on the medical care side and not counted as administrative costs, which also includes such expenses as marketing and executive salaries. Brokers argued commissions would be cut and agents could lose their jobs, if the fees were counted as expenses. That would leave consumers without as much access to brokers, who help them choose health insurance.

• Los Angeles Times: 'Obamacare' to the rescue. A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind. By Spike Dolomite Ward. Excerpts: I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

  I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

  We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

  To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he'd worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family. ...

  Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured"). "I'm not a deadbeat," I blurted out. "I'm a good person. I have two kids and a house!" The clerk was sympathetic, telling me how even though she worked in the healthcare field, she could barely afford insurance herself. ...

  If you are fortunate enough to still be employed and have insurance through your employers, you may feel insulated from the sufferings of people like me right now. But things can change abruptly. If you still have a good job with insurance, that doesn't mean that you're better than me, more deserving than me or smarter than me. It just means that you are luckier. And access to healthcare shouldn't depend on luck.

  Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver — perhaps literally.

  Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down. So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

• Phawker: The Man Who Wasn't There: Meet Wendell Potter, Healthcare Executive Turned Whistleblower. By Jonathan Valania. Excerpt: This is the first installment of a massive, 30,000 word, three-part Q&A with Philadelphian Wendell Potter*, former mild-mannered Cigna health insurance executive turned whistle-blowing superman standing up for truth, justice and the American way. You may have seen Mr. Potter testifying before Congress or talking about the ills of the health insurance industrial complex on CNN or MSNBC or PBS, or in the pages of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Time magazine, to name but a few. Last year he published Deadly Spin, an authoritative takedown of a sick and dangerous healthcare system and the incredibly powerful and phenomenally profitable industry that games it for billions; the dark arts of modern corporate P.R.; and an impassioned call for substantive reform, basic mercy and common decency.

  In this first installment we discuss the crisis of conscience that turned him from loyal, not to mention highly paid, company man to crusading reformer and all-around thorn in the industry’s side. Having long thought he was on the side of the angels he increasingly came to realize that he was in fact playing for the other team, that the point of for-profit healthcare insurance is not paying for customers’ medical costs but avoiding doing so whenever possible. That for-profit health insurance corporations have a legal obligation to prioritize enhancing shareholder value over saving the lives of its customers. That he had blood on his hands. That he was an apologist for a system that denies medical care to more than 50 million Americans, and as a result more than 48,000 people die prematurely every year.

  Potter was tasked with writing an official-sounding report that minimized the problem and shifted all the blame on the uninsured. He helped craft reform-killing talking points for the healthcare lobby’s Congressional stooges to repeat into the cameras of Fox News and CNN. He was part of the effort to smear Michael Moore and discredit Sicko, his 2007 critique of the iniquities of the healthcare industrial complex, even though deep down he knew Moore was dead-on. The final straw was having to serve as company spokesperson through the resulting media firestorm when Cigna denied 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan a liver transplant and she died less than a week later.

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.

• New York Times: Cuomo, Praised for Tax Deal, Takes Victory Lap to City. By Thomas Kaplan. Excerpts: n Friday, the Senate Democratic leader, John L. Sampson, called the governor’s success persuading a divided legislature to swiftly adopt sweeping tax legislation “an amazing thing.” The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, declared, “We have the most effective governor in America today.” Not to be outdone, State Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, described Mr. Cuomo in an interview as “the most popular governor in the world.” ...

  Government watchdog groups were livid over Mr. Cuomo’s stealthy maneuverings in winning enactment of the tax package, which creates a new tax bracket for the state’s highest-income residents while reducing rates for millions of middle-income families. Some Republicans claimed he tried to win their votes by threatening them with political retribution if they did not support him. But as Mr. Cuomo took a victory lap on Friday, promoting aspects of the legislation outside Binghamton and in Brooklyn, he was greeted with overwhelming applause. ...

  “Everybody’s blaming everybody, and they’re pointing fingers, and nothing is happening,” Mr. Cuomo said of Washington. He described New York as “a shining example of the opposite,” adding: “What if you don’t blame each other? What if you don’t argue amongst each other? What if you don’t play politics with each other? What if you work together? What if you stop shouting and you start listening and you find out how to cooperate and how to reach compromise?

• Washington Post: We’re past due on handling the finances of war. By Walter Pincus. Excerpts: Better late than never. It’s time to start thinking about how to pay not only for core spending by the Defense Department for what I will call “peacetime” forces, but also the costs for actual fighting, next year and beyond.

  Bush administration officials took the core Defense budget to provide a force to fight two overseas wars and grew it from $391.5 billion in 2001 to $544.6 billion in 2009. Each year, they sought supplemental billions in addition to the growing core budget. By 2009, funds for Iraq and Afghanistan fighting had totaled $1 trillion. Over the same time period, another $1 trillion had been added to core budget spending.

  Bush administration officials took the core Defense budget to provide a force to fight two overseas wars and grew it from $391.5 billion in 2001 to $544.6 billion in 2009. Each year, they sought supplemental billions in addition to the growing core budget. By 2009, funds for Iraq and Afghanistan fighting had totaled $1 trillion. Over the same time period, another $1 trillion had been added to core budget spending. ...

  But how about linking funds gained from letting the Bush upper-income tax cuts expire to paying for overseas war expenditures? That would gain $40.9 billion in fiscal 2012 according to a 2010 Treasury estimate; another $49.7 billion in fiscal 2013. It would also put us on the way to covering all the extra war expenditures by fiscal 2014.

  “If it takes the threat of a tax increase to get people to think seriously about whether it’s worth continuing to fight wars far from home — wars that have only the most tenuous connection to the national interest — then it’s a good idea,” Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, wrote in November 2009.

• The Berkley Blog: The few, the proud, the very rich. By Sylvia Allegretto. Excerpts: Much of the current political and popular discourse has focused on inequalities that exist in the U.S. In particular the Occupy movement has brought the huge disparities in wealth to the forefront. There are a few questions floating around about wealth. First, how skewed is the distribution? Second, it is true that the rich have gotten much richer over time? —a statement I often heard my Grandma make. ...

  In 2007 (the most recent SCF) the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by the entire bottom fifty percent of American families. This is a stunning statistic to be sure.

  Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons—all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent! ...

  These revelations renewed my interest in the inheritance and estate tax debates. Also, didn’t I just read somewhere that Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back health care coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff?

• Huffington Post: Walmart Heirs Worth Same Amount As Bottom 30 Percent Of Americans In 2007: Analysis. Excerpts: The Occupy Wall Street movement has brought increased focus on the disparity between the top one percent of earners and everyone else in the United States. But one American family paints a particularly stark picture of the country's wealth gap.

  The six children of Walmart's founders, Sam and James "Bud" Walton, had the same net worth in 2007 as the entire bottom 30 percent of American earners, according to an analysis from Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at University of California-Berkeley's Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics.

  Though the 2007 figure is striking, the gap between the Walmart heirs and the rest of the country may get even bigger -- the Walton's combined fortune has grown by more than $20 billion, according to data compiled from the Forbes 400 this year. ...

  The top 10 percent of U.S. earners control two-thirds of the country's wealth and the richest 400 Americans control as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of Americans. The difference is so stark that the public opinion has turned against it: nearly three-quarters of respondents to a poll put out by The Hill said they think income inequality is a problem.

• Nation of Change: The Walmart Heirs Have the Same Net Worth as the Bottom 30 Percent of Americans. By Pat Garofalo. Excerpts: Income inequality in the U.S. is currently the highest its been since the 1920s, with the 400 richest Americans (who are all billionaires) having as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined. And as it turns out, just one wealthy family has managed to amass a fortune equal to that of the combined net worth of the bottom 30 percent of Americans — the Waltons, heirs to the Walmart fortune, as Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, found.

  Not only have the Waltons gathered a fortune equal to that of the bottom third of the country, but they spend it lobbying to cut their own taxes. For years, the Waltons have been supporting efforts to cut the estate tax, the tax levied on inheritance. Conservatives intent on cutting this tax — which they’ve brilliantly dubbed the “death tax” — led to President Obama agreeing to a “compromise” last year that lowered the rate and increased the tax-free exemption, giving a senseless tax break to extremely wealthy families.

• Huffington Post: U.S. Household Wealth Third Quarter 2011: Americans Take Biggest Hit Since 2009. By Derek Kravitz and Dave Carpenter. Excerpts: Americans' wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations raised their cash stockpiles to record levels. ...

  When their declining wealth is combined with stagnant pay, many Americans are less likely to spend. Average household income, adjusted for inflation, fell 6.4 percent last year from 2007, the year before the recession, according to the Census Bureau. That's a drag on the economy, since consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.

• The Raw Story: Fire dept. watches home burn because family didn’t pay fee. By Stephen C. Webster. Excerpts: Firefighters in one Tenn. county watched this week as a family’s home burned to the ground, refusing to take action to save the structure because the residents had not paid their yearly $75 fee. Homeowner Vicky Bell told a reporter with NBC affiliate station Local 6 WPSD that she immediately called 9-1-1 when the fire began, and emergency crews rushed to the scene. Unfortunately for Bell, once firefighters arrived they realized that the family had not contributed to the department this year, so they stood down — exactly as instructed to by the City of South Fulton’s “pay for spray” policy.
• The Atlantic: President Obama's Speech: America's 'Basic Bargain' Is Broken—Now What?. Excerpts: The erosion of a "basic bargain" is an apt frame for seeing the motivations behind the both Tea Party and Occupy movement. These sweeping protests did not come out of nowhere. Middle class tensions have rumbled for years before the recession, as globalization and technology reduced opportunities for the middle class (especially for middle class men) and health care costs stripped more from our compensation, leaving workers with less to take home to their families. Each side has its own boogeyman. The Tea Party (largely) blames Washington and Obama. The Occupy protesters (largely) blame the 1 percent and the financial sector. I happen to think it's more complicated, and that there are in fact too many culprits to blame for us to march against them all at the same time. But my opinion doesn't really matter insofar as we're identifying the origins of American rage. The concept of a broken bargain hits it on the head. ...

  Much of the president's speech beat back criticism that his regulations are hurting growth. While some medium-sized companies have balked at the health care law, poll after poll demonstrates that, when it comes to firms not hiring, sales and domestic labor costs far outweigh concerns about complying with new regulations. Similarly, if you're angry about the layoffs on Wall Street that might be related to the rules in Dodd-Frank (as some of you really are, and some of you really are not), anger toward the White House should be weighed by the memory of 2008, when deregulation and poor regulation allowed the financial system to collapse -- save for a $7 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve. If regulation has a cost, so does its absence.

• Washington Post: Obama’s New Square Deal. By E.J. Dionne Jr. Excerpts: Obama was remarkably direct in declaring that the core ideas of the progressivism advanced by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were right, and that the commitments of Reagan-era supply-side economics are flatly wrong. He praised TR for knowing “that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can” and for understanding that “the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest.”

  He also eviscerated supply-side economics, a theory promising that “if we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger.” “But here’s the problem,” Obama declared. “It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.”

• Huffington Post: Saving Our Democracy. By Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Excerpts: The Constitution of this country has served us well, but when the Supreme Court says that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger. That is why I have introduced a resolution in the Senate calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

  I did not do this lightly. In fact, I had never done it before. The U.S. constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often. In light of the Supreme Court's infamous 5-to-4 decision in the Citizens United case, however, I saw no alternative.

  I strongly disagree with the ruling. In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign. Corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections.

  The ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy. It has further tilted the balance of the power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when the wealthiest people in this country already never had it so good. History will record that the Citizens United decision is one of the worst in the history of our country.

  At a time when corporations have more than $2 trillion in cash in their bank accounts and are making record-breaking profits, the American people should be concerned when the Supreme Court says that these corporations have a constitutionally-protected right to spend shareholders' money to dominate an election as if they were real, live persons. If we do not reverse this decision, there will be no end to the impact that corporate interests can have on our campaigns and our democracy. ...

  When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

• Wall Street Journal: SEC Puts Falcone, Harbinger in Its Sights. By Steve Eder. Excerpts: Hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone was threatened with possible civil-fraud charges from the top U.S. securities regulator, the latest in a series of setbacks that have buffeted the investor since he rocketed to stardom in 2007. Mr. Falcone and his firm, Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, received so-called Wells notices from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a regulatory filing Friday, an indication that charges are likely.

  Among the issues the SEC has explored is whether Harbinger agreed to allow some investors, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to cash out of their holdings while barring other clients from withdrawing their money, according to people familiar with the matter. ...

  Harbinger said it is "disappointed" with the issuance of the Wells notices, and if the SEC decides to bring an enforcement action, it intends to "vigorously defend against it," according to the filing.

  The threat of SEC charges is a blow for Mr. Falcone, who was catapulted to fame on Wall Street when his successful hedge-fund bets against subprime mortgages earned him billions of dollars. Investors flocked to Harbinger, helping push its assets to a peak of $26 billion in 2008.

• Financial Times (United Kingdom): Republicans block consumer finance nominee. By Shahien Nasiripou. Excerpts: Senate Republicans have blocked President Barack Obama’s choice to lead a new consumer finance regulator, setting the stage for an election year battle over the direction of financial reform. The confirmation of Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney-general who has sued big US banks for alleged mortgage misdeeds, was prevented because supporters failed to muster the 60 votes needed under Senate rules to end debate and proceed to a final majority vote on the issue. Of the 100 senators, 53 are Democrats and aligned independents.

  Mr Cordray was nominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency created by last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The bureau, which consolidated powers from a variety of regulatory agencies, is meant to protect borrowers from abusive lenders. ...

  Harry Reid, Senate Democratic leader, said: “This was the first time in Senate history a party blocked a qualified nominee solely because it disagrees with the existence of an agency that was created by law.” Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard bankruptcy professor now seeking to represent Massachusetts in the Senate, conceived of the agency and led the charge for its creation. Mr Obama however declined to nominate her to lead the consumer bureau, disappointing his supporters.

• Business Insider: Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs. By Henry Blodget. Excerpts: In the war of rhetoric that has developed in Washington as both sides try to blame each other for our economic mess, one argument has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact: Rich people create jobs. Specifically, entrepreneurs, when incented by low taxes, build companies and create millions of jobs.

  And these entrepreneurs, therefore, the argument goes, can solve our nation's huge unemployment problem — if only we cut taxes and regulations so they can be incented to build more companies and create more jobs.

  In other words, by even considering raising taxes on "the 1%," we are considering destroying the very mechanism that makes our economy the strongest and biggest in the world: The incentive for entrepreneurs to start companies in the hope of getting rich and, in the process, creating millions of jobs.

  Now, there have long been many absurd holes in this theory, starting with

  1. Taxes on rich people (capital gains and income) are, relative to history, low, so raising them would only begin to bring them back in line with prior prosperous periods, and
  2. Dozens of rich entrepreneurs have already gone on record confirming that a modest hike in capital gains and income taxes would not have the slightest impact on their desire to create companies and jobs, given that tax rates are historically low. ...

  The most important reason the theory that "rich people create the jobs" is absurd, argues Nick Hanauer, the founder of online advertising company aQuantive, which Microsoft bought for $6.4 billion, is that rich people do not create jobs, even if they found and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people.

  What creates the jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is the company's customers.