Bob Gringely today reported on the internal inside mumbles that IBM Global Services is going to layoff over 100,000 U.S. workers and offshore outsource entire divisions. Cringley reports IBM's U.S. Worker destruction agenda, named LEAN, is going on beind closed doors as we speak and IBM has a strategy to do this over time, in order to not draw too much attention from the press. Can the leak in the U.S. job dam be disguised to deny the flood of jobs being offshore outsourced?
Hiding the agenda appears to be IBM's only LEAN objective.
For two years Big Blue has been ramping up its operations in India and China with what I have been told is the ultimate goal of laying off at least one American worker for every overseas hire
While this quote may seem like rumor, Cringely is correct in reporting it; the numbers are actually documented in IBM's offshore outsourcing agenda. The clear intent of IBM is to rid themselves of U.S. workers. The 13k layoff announcement, along with increases in Indian headcounts: 6k in 2003, 60k in 2006, and 100k projected for 2010, are mentioned.
A very important political implication here is that Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, has been the architect of all of the "competitiveness" and "innovation" responses to offshoring. He was co-chair of the Council on Competitiveness which has a very similar globalisation, labor arbitrage agenda along with National Innovation Initiative: Rising Above Gathering Storm.
Talk about the fox watching the hen house!.
Palmisano obviously thinks the great competitiveness is simply to wipe out American jobs! Maybe he should be wiped out, screwing over American workers is not exactly innovative thinking!
Yet another article subtly describing IBM's betrayal to their U.S. workers who built up the corporation: Economist article on IBM and globalization.
Meanwhile, back in the United States,
Unemployment rate up 4.5%.
Poll questions inspired by or taken from I, Cringely article comments.