IBM May Cut Thousands of Jobs, Employee Group Says [View All]

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: Bloomberg

Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp., the biggest technology employer, may cut thousands of jobs this month amid the global economic slowdown, according to the employee group Alliance for IBM.

Employees have been hearing that layoffs will take place in late January, said Lee Conrad, national coordinator of the Alliance, an organization seeking union recognition at Armonk, New York-based IBM. The size of the reduction may be larger than those in the past few years, he said today in an interview.

“Generally they go in batches of a couple hundred here and a couple hundred there,” Conrad said.

A post on the Alliance’s Web site said the company may cut 16,000 jobs, which would top the 15,600 eliminated by Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano in 2002. The worldwide slump has tightened companies’ technology budgets and IBM may report a 1.6 percent drop in sales last quarter to $28.4 billion, based on the average analyst estimate.

“There’s likely to be production cutbacks at IBM,” said Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management LLC in Bedford Hills, New York. “There will be job cuts. For now, reducing the workforce to benefit the viability and competitiveness of the company makes sense.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aXFIXifapQeE

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This, combined with Alcoa's news, represents 31,000 job losses announced in the past hour.