Is IBM Planning Huge Layoffs? It’ll be LEAN, and DEFINITELY Mean

It’s a rumor floating around the Internet … and it sounds outrageous … however, in this age of globalization and outsourcing, it wouldn’t surprise me. Although I’ve seen it in more than a few places, the start of the rumor was a Robert Cringley column at PBS.org. It certers around an IBM project called LEAN that, as the name sorta implies, is meant to turn the corporation into a lean, mean profit-making machine that will … short-term … be really good for the stock.

LEAN is about offshoring and outsourcing at a rate never seen before at IBM. 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. The BIG PLAN is to continue until at least half of Global Services, or about 150,000 workers, have been cut from the U.S. division.

The point of this has nothing to do with the work itself and everything to do with the price of IBM shares. Remove at least 100,000 heads, eliminate the long-term drag of a defined-benefit pension plan, and the price of IBM shares will soar. Source: I, Cringely

Like I said, this is all a rumor, but I would be remiss if I didn’t post about it … While I am no economist, I have strong feelings about offshoring / outsourcing. While it’s great for the corporation in the short-term, it disenfranchises the American worker and leads to a squeeze on the once-healthy middle class. You only need look at the manufacturing sector to see how a whole sector of jobs has left the country … and if, as some theorize, global warming and peak oil lead to a time where importing of virtually all our manufactured goods is no longer viable, we may regret having dismantled our manufacturing infrastructure.

Further, Cringely makes some good points in the article about how IBM and other tech companies are complaining about the lack of technical workers in the U.S., and thus how the H1B program needs expansion. Here’s your solution, 150K technical workers about the hit the streets! Additionally, as Cringely says, and I have spoken about privately for years, it’s not that technical workers are unavailable but that cheap technical workers are unavailable. As always with corporations, it’s all about the profit (don’t get me wrong, I understand that is what they are supposed to do … make money) … especially since greater profit means greater bonuses for the CEO, right?