I thought I'd heard everything. I understand taxpayer anger about AIG bonuses, and the anger coming from Michigan today, but this takes the cake.
Can we please get our pitchforks out now?
In all my years here, I've given as much help as possible to anyone asking for it, and have not asked for a thing. But I'm asking now. At the end of this diary is a link that will take you to an automated push-button application set up by the Communication Workers of America. It will email your senators, congresspeople, the office of the president, and the VP's office.
Please, will you go push the button? If you work in a union shop, will you ask them to push the button? If you belong to any other large progressive organizations, can you ask them to push the button and send this email? Will you get everyone you know to push the damn button? Enough is enough.
Please Rec this diary and help the CWA get this message out before it's too late.
There was a diary written last week about IBM sending 5000 jobs to India last Thursday. The real story is that they've shipped 10,000 jobs since the beginning of the year. There are reportedly more to come before the year is over.
Before anyone starts claiming that this is just a solid business reaction to poor economic times, please consider the following:
The CEO of IBM announced in January that 2008 was really great, and the 4th quarter was very strong. There was an email sent to all the employees thanking them for making the company a great success, and promising everyone bonuses just before they started offshoring 10,000 of their jobs.
Since that announcement, IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano, has had a number of meetings with Obama, and expressed a great degree of interest in getting a lot of stimulus contracts. One of his ideas that's hit the news is to use up some tax dollars creating Broadband over powerlines - 20th century technology at 21st century prices.
Also since that announcement, IBM has created a whole new organization in charge of nothing but gaining and spending stimulus dollars - money intended to create jobs and get our economy going again.
Now, in the latest news to come out of Armonk, IBM intends to patent their method of offshoring jobs while continuing to receive tax breaks.
As IBM was firing thousands of American workers last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Big Blue's application to copyright a computerized system that calculates how to offshore jobs while maximizing government tax breaks.
In their application to patent a "method and system for strategic global resource sourcing," five Hudson Valley IBMers describe how it weighs such plans as "50 percent of resources in China by 2010," against such factors as labor costs, infrastructure and the "minimum head count to qualify for incentives."
This is unconscionable. It's unbelievable. This company wants to patent a process to suck up our tax dollars and use them to line the executive's pockets while driving labor into the ground.
Here is where we take action.
Please go to this CWA webpage, and scroll to the
Click & Take action on job cuts and offshoring!
banner. Click the button and send the email to your reps, and to Obama and Joe Biden.
Enough is enough.
Thanks for your support.