Thursday, February 5, 2009

IBM shipping jobs abroad (and workers too!)

IBM is now offering laid off employees in the US and Canada jobs in India, Nigeria, and Russia (source). I particularly like this:

Only "satisfactory performers" who are "willing to work on local terms and conditions" should pursue the jobs, the document says. IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labor laws.


Lee Conrad, a spokesman for Alliance@IBM, had the following to say:

IBM not only is offshoring its work to low-cost countries, now IBM wants employees to offshore themselves... At a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States... This is unacceptable to the Alliance and we are pursuing this by asking our members and all IBM employees to contact their political representatives to demand an accounting and transparency in job cuts and offshoring from IBM


Perhaps every worker at every Fortune 500 company should contact their elected officials, as this could happen to any one of them.

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