IBM to Lose 13,000 Jobs

KingDaveRa writes "The BBC is reporting that IBM is losing 13,000 jobs. This comes after disappointing financial results. Most jobs will be going in europe."

Hmm not a suprise

[Foo2rama]

Gee maybe becuase they sold the whole PC MFG dept?

My uncle

[MaestroSartori]

has just been laid off from the Greenock plant, where he was involved in manufacturing for 20 or so years. He's now working in a call centre handling mortgage applications... :(

The UK as a whole seems to be moving towards this kind of economy - jobs involving manufacturing, especially, are going, to be replaced by jobs where you can be sacked at the drop of a hat, and are generally pretty poorly treated. Sad.

See the opportunity

[dublinclontarf]

This is an opportunity for all those who lose thier job to go and start thier own company, I think that there is a need in the European market for more small I.T shops. But are we Europeans up to it? At least the Irish are.

RSS of this story

[tokyopimpdaddy]

I only noticed this story via the BBC RSS feed as it had some extensive strikethroughs - nothing massively interesting, but it shows that they do indeed have editors! Shameless plug of my blog here with pics:

http://www.nanikore.net/?p=364 [nanikore.net]

Wilde

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. "To loose one job can be seen as a misfotune, to loose 13,000 looks like carelessness." To misquote Oscar Wilde.

Dont forget about Poland

[AdamPiotrZochowski]

IBM is expanding in Poland, hiring almost 200 people in Cracow alone, and so are
many other big name companies like Motorolla, KPMG, Lufthansa, 3M, Phillips:

http://miasta.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,35798,2689839.htm l [gazeta.pl]

everyone in europe is moving to Poland, its as nice as Ireland, just as many drunks
but much cheaper, people are educated, and lots of beautifull clean land.

--
/apz, Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever.

Re: My uncle

[Anonymous Coward]

My sympathies go with your uncle. I've been made redundant twice - it is not fun. What the the election in the UK today there is a LOT of talk about the UK economy (what with the collapse of Rover etc.). The problem is that we are becoming a service industry - which is no bad thing in itself (unless you are a manufacturer). This is the crux of the issue a lot of Brits have with jobs going to India - it is NOT based on racial prejudice as most would suggest - it is simply a matter of job competition. The reason we can get 'sacked at a drop of a hat' is because people are willing to do the job for a paycheque virtually worthless over here. Just a quick side note - all those hyper-patriotic halfwits shouting for Thatcher like she was the 2nd coming in the 80s now find their jobs sent to India and are sad. Why don't they research Thatchers attitude into shipping jobs abroad when it suited big businesses. Maybe a bit less flag waving and a bit more thought would've helped. No disrespect to the people of India - but its not a good situation for the British nation to be in, and could have been avoided.

Re:Advice to the corporate slave ... A Rant

[bigtallmofo]

You are a liar. My pay as a developer has gone significantly up since Republicans took office.

Keep doomsaying and maybe you'll be back in power. That's a lot easier than coming up with your own ideas and presenting them in a way that brings people to your side.

Hmmmm...

[Bad to the Ben]

Bill Gates can't find enough IT workers, so he wants to change visa regs to get more in. IBM has too many IT workers, wants to fire them.

Perhaps Microsoft (European division perhaps) could hire the retrenched IBM staff?

Re:moving to cheaper countries

[JohnnyKlunk]

It's already happening. I don't know why the media hasn't picked up on it. I've got friends at a major UK corporation. Some time back they were all outsourced to IBM. Now they're being flown to Bangalore to show people there how to do their jobs.
Once they've handed their own jobs to these people they then get moved to 'project teams'.

Will be interesting to see how many redunancies are made without ever suggesting that the jobs have been moved to India.

OK...so are they cutting jobs, or outsourcing them

[PenguinBoyDave]

That is what I really want to know. If they are cutting back to save $$ then that is one thing. However, if they send those jobs to India or the Philippines, that is another. IBM has these cuts every single year. I'm wondering when they will stop cutting?

Re:Job losses voluntary in Europe - facts

[geoffrobinson]

You may have a point. Their jobs may be more expensive just b/c they are in Europe than in a more economically free area.

Re:Losing your job is hard

[Martin Blank]

It's generally accepted that most people are not referring to law enforcement (which includes the DA and PubDef offices as well as probation departments) or the fire departments when talking about public servants being slow and/or lazy. They're generally referring to the office workers and bureaucrats who move through arcane processes, playing politics with a viciousness akin to Washington, supported by a union that will fight tooth, nail, cudgel, mace, sword, gun, howitzer, and ICBM to keep from losing someone, even though there is plenty of justifiable cause.

I work for a county government. There are some good people, yes, but there are also a lot of people who play backstabbing games (particularly with those of us on contract to the county) or who can't bear to let a little bit of control leave their desks. I've had to go out to the various agencies and the amount of random chatter I see happening is far and away more than I ever saw when working in large corporations. Deadlines on simple projects are missed by months -- we're more than a year behind on rolling out one e-mail server because of politics involved with other agencies trying to shape our Active Directory implementation.

The highest quotients of good people are usually where the workers are most visible -- police, fire, DA/PubDef, probation, and healthcare and social services field personnel. Get back in the offices, though, and the signal to noise ratio can get extraordinarily bad.

Re:My uncle

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush's "ownership society" is a joke. He fails to recognize that nearly everyone who opts into Personal Savings Accounts will need a professional money manager who gets commissions. He also fails to admit that "past performance is no guarantee of future results." For example, the US economy has been flat for over a year, now, after a brief recovery in 2002/2003. He also fails to admit that real estate costs are rising much faster than inflation (10%/year where I live, most people can't even afford down payments any more). He also fails to admit that wages are nearly stagnant (wage freezes are almost the rule in several big sectors--manufacturing, health care, universities, etc.).

His plans are so transparently unviable that I feel sorry for people gullible enough to fall for them.

For the Democrats, while a woman canidate would be wonderful, can she overcome the misogynistic attitude many people have towards leadership on top of all the other issues? What would be awesome is Condi vs. Hillary. Hillary's ego, then, would simply crush Condi into a pulp. No debating would be needed, just post big pictures of Hillary glaring down the opposition.