Reports Coming In Of Big IBM Layoffs Underway In The U.S.

 

Last week, IBM reported to investors that its workforce at the end of 2015 was almost as big as its workforce at the end of 2014 (within less than 1 percent), in spite of a year in which 70,000 employees left the company, to be replaced with new hires and acquisitions.

By the end of this week, the picture may look quite different. Today reports are coming in that big layoffs across the United States are underway, likely one-third of the U.S. workforce, according to one soon-to-be-laid-off IBMer. (At the end of 2015, IBM had approximately 378,000 employees worldwide; it no longer breaks out numbers for individual countries.) Such reports used to be gathered by the Endicott Alliance, a union organizing effort that closed its doors last year. Now they are being collected by an informal Facebook group, “WatchingIBM,” that was started by former members of that organization.

Likely adding to the pain of many of these workers is a recent change in IBM’s severance policy, reducing a potential maximum of six months of benefits to one month’s worth. The new policy only applies to those who lose their jobs due to the elimination of a position or due to unsatisfactory performance, and it should kick in during mass layoffs. However, employees in the past have complained, directly to me and to others, that the company often manipulates performance reviews to eliminate employees. There are some signals in the stories below that this is happening in this case.

Here’s what some of those affected today reported to the WatchingIBM Facebook group:

"I am a GTS Strategic Outsourcing casualty of the mass firing today. My manager told me it was big and widespread, and I'd be hearing from a lot of people that will also be notified today.”

"After 41 plus years I got the call today. How many more ways can they take from hard working IBM'rs? I was ready to go last year when they had the severance package. Why didn't they do it then? We have been living and working with this ‘writing on the wall’ for years. What stings the most is the severance cut.”

“Latest areas getting cut: AA IBM CMS Cloud Division; AMS Strategic Technical Services; Global Services Parts Operations; GTS Strategic Outsourcing. Workers are also reporting work is being moved offshore to Hungary and Brazil.”

"I am cut while my replacement H1B visa worker stays."

“The 6 hardware planners in Poughkeepsie were all laid off as of as of 5/31 with one-month severance.”

“The big s$#* job is that I'm only getting 1 month severance instead of the 25 weeks I am entitled when I was hired.”

“Our Service Availability Management team got the axe today. Very sad day after 28 years with the company”

I also received a phone call from a soon-to-be former IBM employee at a New Jersey IBM facility who had a similar story to tell. I had never spoken to him before but he was reaching out because he believed the media needs to get the word out about what is happening. Here’s what he had to say:

“It is bad, really bad. It’s a mass layoff today. It is a sad day for IBM. People are being told not to talk about it. I was told by a manager in getting the news [of my job being eliminated], who was reading off of a script, that one third of the U.S. workforce is being ‘rebalanced,’ which is what they call it.

Concerning performance reviews, I’ve gotten 2+’s [IBM employees are rated on a scale of 1 to 3, 1 being the highest] for years, this year I got a 3. The manager told me he’d been told that he needed to RA a certain number of people. But I’m hearing that even people with 2s were RA’d [another IBM term for layoff, it stands for resource action] today.

They are giving us 90 days paid working notice, one-month severance, and $2500 in money for retraining.

IBM is trying to candy coat this thing, they will frame it as a skill set change. But we think it’s more about jobs going to India and other places.”

An IBM spokesperson said that rumors of layoffs affecting a third of the U.S. workforce today are untrue, and  IBM “currently has more than 25,000 open positions” as part of “transforming its business to lead in a new era of cognitive and cloud computing.”

The Drumpfinator

 

John Oliver focused on Donald Trump this time, and brought forward various issues and problems with the candidate. But the best was when he unveiled that his team had put together a new browser extension, which would convert all the ‘Trump’ on websites to ‘Driumpf’. And it works !

Leap Day

 

What happens when you get an extra day in the year ? Well, the Indian Government decides to unveil the new budget. A mixed bag, this year. More taxes, more ways to take your money. Nothing given back. The trickle-down news is that cars will get expensive. Specially diesel vehicles. And specially the high end variants. They will attract a 5% additional cess under various monickers. Just after this news, they increased the price of diesel too.

But the rope-a-dope news was about the EPF withdrawals. After decades of mulling over this, the government has proposed a tax on EPF withdrawals. It will be a case of double taxation. The EPF component is part of the gross salary, on which tax is already paid. If the withdrawal is taxed, that will be the second tax on the same amount, with its interest.

Acche din.

Speaking of good days, over on the west side of the world, Leonardo Di Caprio finally won the best actor oscar after all those years of being nominated. Here is a person who found success to early, but had to wait 20 years to get the highly coveted academy award. Its not even his best acting in the Revenant. But this year, surprisingly, there was lack of competition in the category. The king of the world not ought to retire.

 

Indian Budget 2016, Oscar Leonardo DiCaprio Revenant tax SUV diesel

Throwback: Magazine CD Days

 

I was back in my home town some time back, and was going through some old ‘garbage’. You know, the stuff you are sure are useless, but you keep around anyway. And I ran into some old magazine CDs I had purchased more than 10 years ago.

They are from a computer magazine called CHIP, which they later renamed to DIGIT. The came out in monthly issues, and each issue had two CDs, one with business/work software, and the other had fun/games/videos stuff like that. During the mid nineties these magazines where very popular and sought after by computer enthusiasts. Because the internet had just hit India, but the usage rates were awefully high. Downloading a CD worth of content from the internet would take hours ,and it cost about 60 rupees per hour. So getting two CDs of downloaded stuff for 100 rupees was like a good deal, all the content was nicely documented and arranged in a searachable menu. And the CDs still work till this day !

 

 

 

The 2nd fun CD usually came with trial/shareware versions of computer games, and most of us got to play US titles in this way, without having to download them ourselves. I als digged the computer/programmer softwares they used to ship. The CDs I have are dated July 2001, and November 2002.

 

 

Digit still gives out discs, though now they consist of DVDs.Today of course the internet has become a lot more affordable, so one can stay online all day without having to empty one’s pockets for all those downloads. But its fun to think how far we have gone since then.

RocketMiles–Earn Miles by Booking Hotels !

 

Just happened to come across this service called RocketMiles which gives out free miles just for singing up, and further more for booking hotels via their site or mobile app. These miles can be used to book airline tickets. They have launched their service in India now, and lots of miles are up for grabs.