NEW YORK (CNN) -- IBM employees being laid off in North America now have an alternative to joining the growing ranks of the unemployed - work for the company abroad.
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Only "satisfactory performers" who are "willing to work on local terms and conditions" should pursue the jobs, the document says. IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labor laws.
One need only look at the compensation and stock options available to IBM's CEO and Chairman Sam Palmisano to grow angry: his salary alone is $1.8 million. On Feb. 1st he sold 55,253 shares worth $5,103,167. Let's see him go to India and work for local pay.
Workers at IBM say the technology company launched a round of layoffs Wednesday, a day after announcing a boost in profits. A union official estimated the cuts at 2,900, but said an exact count isn't available.
On Tuesday, IBM reported a 12 percent increase in earnings in the fourth quarter of 2008 over the same period in 2007.
The next day, Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, posted news that job cuts had begun. Laid-off workers began leaving comments about their own statuses on the Alliance@IBM Web site. "I was whacked yesterday," wrote one, who signed the comment as Lexington. "29 years 10 months."
Doug Shelton, an IBM spokesman, declined to say how many people were being let go. "We are not communicating that information," he said.
International Business Machines Corp.'s chief executive, Samuel Palmisano, advised the Obama transition team last month that $30 billion in government investments in expanding broadband access, computerizing health-care records and improving the electrical grid could create more than 900,000 U.S. jobs.
The IBM presentation came in response to a November request from the Obama advisers for an analysis of the job-creation impact of information-technology investments. IBM said that Mr. Palmisano made the presentation in a conference call with transition team members including Carol Browner, who has been named the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, and Julius Genachowski, a top technology adviser for the president-elect.
There's a certain inevitability to that last. In the quest for really horrible advice from cretinous IT CEOs, Obama was handicapped. Carly Fiorina, Hewlett Packard's quondam destroyer, had already been snapped up by McCain. Poor old Democrats. Always having to settle for second best.
Comments (8)
sociopathy
by institutional design
is still sociopathy
Posted by op | February 9, 2009 9:25 PM
Posted on February 9, 2009 21:25
No doubt, taxonomically and otherwise.
Posted by Al Schumann | February 9, 2009 9:57 PM
Posted on February 9, 2009 21:57
a hobgoblin of babbit minds
the logic of "value" max
meshing with the target
of profit max
i'm with hume
logic is a hand maiden
specifics here :
she injects LTDs into
the psyche politic
logically trans m-ed diseases
nasty viral memes
circulating thru the oceanic social mind eh ??
Posted by op | February 10, 2009 8:03 AM
Posted on February 10, 2009 08:03
Would that count as an increase in exports?
Posted by Son of Uncle Sam | February 10, 2009 12:56 PM
Posted on February 10, 2009 12:56
I think an increase in exports would be measured by an increase in receipts that could be banked abroad. A sale or lease to a subsidiary would count. As would a synthetic financial instrument used to hedge such a transaction.
Owen, I get a big, ghoulish kick out of the way the arbitrage sociopaths are trying to kill off the rentiers. They've reasoned, correctly, that there's no need for rentiers when Uncle Sugar will provide all the credit and liquidity they need.
Posted by Al Schumann | February 10, 2009 1:35 PM
Posted on February 10, 2009 13:35
That was a subliminal message: lack of empathy and edging toward positive spins of enslavement, sociopathic traits. It was either that or a play on the Mariel Boat Lift.
I always thought that to assign psychological traits to different economic forces or just a medium business was as fun as mascots. Sociopaths at the chief levels Ax men managers as Sedists H.R. as Paranoids Masochists at entry levels ect. Business ethics is sort of like Hawian shirt day, completly out of context.
Posted by Son of Uncle Sam | February 11, 2009 11:59 AM
Posted on February 11, 2009 11:59
It is fun. And hey, if the shoe fits... throw it, I guess. Although I reckon we're going to need lots and lots of shoes -- and maybe a few slippers for the junk-dialectical pencil necks and bleeding heart scabs.
Smug, smirking servility runs through every last one of the institutions propping up the political economy. The kiss up/kick down sensibility runs strong and true.
Posted by Al Schumann | February 11, 2009 12:53 PM
Posted on February 11, 2009 12:53
Every liberal should send shoes...w/ insurance and signature receipt (to support the postal system). Then a donation could be made for people that really need them in the former presidents name to the children of Iraq. Instead send old clothes, books, and canned goods too.
Old shoes
Speaking of canned goods... what a stupid counter productive idea...except for the postage they sould do that. And replace their defiance with good will.
Posted by Son of Uncle Sam | February 11, 2009 3:33 PM
Posted on February 11, 2009 15:33