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Scattered layoffs in IBM can touch 4,600: Report
By siliconindia
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Monday, 09 March 2009, 19:20 IST |
1 Comments
New York: For some weeks, there have been reports of technology giant IBM laying off people in small groups. But now the total number of "scattered layoffs" amounts to nearly 4,600 employees in North America even though the company has reported surprisingly strong quarterly profits in January, a media report says.
"Big companies also routinely carry out scattered layoffs that are small enough to stay under the radar. And IBM is one such company," the New York Times said.
Interestingly, after reporting strong quarterly profits in January, its Chief Executive Samuel J Palmisano in an e-mail message to employees said that while other companies were reducing jobs, his company would not. "Most importantly, we will invest in our people," he wrote.
But the next day, the New York Times said "more than 1,400 employees in IBM's sales and distribution division in the U.S. and Canada were told their jobs would be eliminated in a month. More cuts followed, and overall, IBM has told about 4,600 North American employees in recent weeks they are being laid off."
J Randall MacDonald, IBM's senior vice-president for human resources, said, "it was routine for the company to lay off some employees while hiring elsewhere".
IBM, nevertheless, says it remains the largest high-tech employer in the U.S., with 1,15,000 workers. But the company's American employment has declined steadily, down to 29 percent of its worldwide payroll of 3,98,445 at the end of 2008.
However, according to experts, these unannounced cuts raise issues of disclosure and the treatment of workers.
The report cited Harley Shaiken, a labour economist at the University of California, Berkeley, as saying that "the issue becomes all the more pressing in this downward economic spiral."
