As IBM layoffs mount, company eyes government billions

[1prophet]

As IBM layoffs mount, company eyes government billions

By Christine Young
Times Herald-Record
January 30, 2009 12:28 PM

Standing beside President Barack Obama, who was touting his $825 billion stimulus package this week, IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano stepped up to the lectern and waxed patriotic.

?We need to reignite growth in our country,? Palmisano said. ?We need to undertake projects that actually will create jobs.?

He is positioning IBM to get a slice of the stimulus pie.

Since November, Palmisano has been making a pitch to Obama?s transition team that investing $30 billion in expanding rural broadband access, computerizing health-care records and improving the electrical grid could create 949,000 U.S. jobs.

It could also create billions in revenue for Big Blue, which specializes in the technology and services used for health-care IT and smart-grid infrastructure, not to mention its recent $9.6 million contract to provide broadband service in rural America.

?It is an imperative that business and government come together,? Palmisano said. ?We know that $30 billion could create a million jobs in the next 12 months.?

On the day Palmisano said this, IBM was insisting job numbers are immaterial.

The Armonk-based company has cut thousands of jobs over the past week, and it won?t release the numbers, saying the Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies to disclose only ?material? events.

The layoffs included hundreds in East Fishkill, one month after New York taxpayers paid IBM $45 million for not cutting jobs in East Fishkill.

The layoffs were ?material? only to the workers who lost their jobs, and to New York?s depleted unemployment fund.

To IBM, which reported record fourth-quarter revenue of $103.6 billion, ?Managing resources in this way keeps us competitive, while adapting to the evolving needs of our clients,? said spokesman Doug Shelton.

It also enables the company to hire cheaper workers in places like India.

In 2007, 121,000 of IBM?s 387,000 workers were in the U.S., down slightly from 2006. Meanwhile, staffing in India jumped from 9,000 workers in 2003 to 74,000 workers in 2007.

But for $30 billion, Palmisano promises a million jobs will come to America.

?We help the president get the package through, and we get the work,? he said. ?And we have a lot of work ahead of us.?

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

 

[GoPackGo]

30 Billion dollars will create a million jobs














IN INDIA

Soon India will be "too expensive" then they will look for somewhere "cheaper"

 

[RightIsWrong]

I was contacted by a recruiter about a gig with IBM. Once I started asking questions, I found out that the $$ was okay, but they screw you over in so many other ways that it was a pay cut to go work with them.

They hire you on as a "full-time" contractor who is paid directly from the company, you get no benefits, no paid holidays, no vacation time, no overtime, they expect you to carry a phone/pager and be on call 24/7 and you get no extra money if you are actually called in, etc.

Simply put, they are a classic example of what is wrong with the mindset of corporate America and they, like the banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc should just die off if they are that incapable of running a business effectively. There will be millions of capable people to pick up the slack and fill the void.

 

[Darwin333]

All they need is $30B?? It would be much easier for them to just buy a bank or two so they qualify for TARP funds like everyone else is doing.

 

[Sacrilege]

Maybe some Indian owned firm will rise up from the swamps and take IBM market share.

Didn't IBM collaborate with the Nazis? Let them burn in Hell.

 

[RichardE]

?The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,?

- Franklin D Roosevelt.


Do the bailouts show a more in depth adaption of socialism by the government..or an increase in power of the corporations to the point where the government "needs" to back them due to the power they have. People think fascism represents only indiscriminate killing of dissenters do not really know exactly what it means. I wonder what the history books will write about this day in age, perhaps much the same as they documented the rise of Fascism and communism in the 30's.


Another telling quote

?Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power?

- Benito Mussolini

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Sacrilege
Didn't IBM collaborate with the Nazis? Let them burn in Hell.

IIRC, their German office sold them punch card machines.

 

[Jmman]

Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
I was contacted by a recruiter about a gig with IBM. Once I started asking questions, I found out that the $$ was okay, but they screw you over in so many other ways that it was a pay cut to go work with them.

They hire you on as a "full-time" contractor who is paid directly from the company, you get no benefits, no paid holidays, no vacation time, no overtime, they expect you to carry a phone/pager and be on call 24/7 and you get no extra money if you are actually called in, etc.

Simply put, they are a classic example of what is wrong with the mindset of corporate America and they, like the banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc should just die off if they are that incapable of running a business effectively. There will be millions of capable people to pick up the slack and fill the void.

Sounds familiar.......:roll:

I am sitting in an office right now at IBM.........

 

[Sacrilege]

Originally posted by: RichardE
?The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,?

- Franklin D Roosevelt.


Do the bailouts show a more in depth adaption of socialism by the government..or an increase in power of the corporations to the point where the government "needs" to back them due to the power they have. People think fascism represents only indiscriminate killing of dissenters do not really know exactly what it means. I wonder what the history books will write about this day in age, perhaps much the same as they documented the rise of Fascism and communism in the 30's.


Another telling quote

?Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power?

- Benito Mussolini

What is really interesting are the middle class Republicans who agree with the financial elites on everything, even when it is against their own interests. They think they are part of the elites themselves.

They are the "useful idiots," people who can be manipulated to do the bidding of the powers that be. We should all keep an eye on them because they are the "true believers," the type of people who became SS troopers in Germany.