Fears voiced of further cuts, as 1,650 IBM jobs go across two
divisions
Union organisers at IBM claim the technology giant is planning
"major job cuts" after IBM announced it is to axe 1,500 jobs from
its consulting division, and a further 150 from its PC division.
Big Blue says the move is a "skills rebalancing exercise", rather
than a cut back in response to the slowdown. The consulting
redundancies amount to no more than 1% of the 150,000 jobs within
IBM Global Services, and are being portrayed as an effort to ensure
its skills match those demanded by its customers. IBM says it will
continue to recruit staff in other areas.
But officials from Alliance@IBM, a division of the Communications
Workers of America union, claim at least 660 staff have been laid
off in sales and distribution, while 1,000 manufacturing jobs were
lost at three US plants. It has sent a letter to Sam Palmisano,
IBM's president and likely successor to Lou Gerstner, demanding
that "IBM senior management be immediately forthcoming in providing
all IBM employees information on pending job or benefit
cuts".
Meanwhile, IBM has completed the $1bn (£0.7bn) acquisition of the
database assets of Informix Corporation. The purchase will see
2,500 Informix employees join the IBM ranks, whilst the newly
acquired product line will be sold through a combined IBM and
Informix salesforce. As a result of the acquisition, the remains of
Informix Corporation will be renamed Ascential Software
Corporation.
IBM says it will now begin the task of integrating selected
Informix technologies into its DB2 Universal Database, which will
continue to be Big Blue's flagship database product. The Informix
business will become part of the existing IBM software data
management division, headed up by Janet Perna, who claims "the
newly formed data management team will continue to deliver the most
innovative technologies at the best value to customers".