IBM to Fired U.S. Workers - Offshore Outsource Yourself!

Here is the epitome of labor arbitrage and the obvious inhuman view IBM has on it's employees.

IBM is telling soon to be fired U.S. and Canadian workers they can have a job, but only if they move to India or China and work for Indian and Chinese wages. (It is yet to be seen what India and China have to say about this with foreigners coming in and taking jobs!).

Information Week has the details:

The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM's pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."

The document states that the program is limited to "satisfactory performers who have been notified of separation from IBM U.S. or Canada and are willing to work on local terms and conditions." The latter indicates that workers will be paid according to prevailing norms in the countries to which they relocate. In many cases, that could be substantially less than what they earned in North America.

IBM has laid off more than 4,000 workers in the United States since the beginning of January, according to an employee group. The company has confirmed layoffs but won't comment on specific numbers.

Can you imagine this? Rip your kids out of school, abandon your relatives, leave your entire country....just to be able to eat? By the way, you know that retirement you've been saving for or that U.S. debt you have? Oh no problem? We're going to pay you pennies on the dollar and I guess your mortgage, MasterCard and Visa will just have to understand. Sorry you will later not be able to afford to retire in your own country.

This is the ultimate example of just how IBM looks at it's labor force. Tt's quite frightening for IBM should actually need that little minor detail called talent and skills! Ah, but no, they look at workers simply as an expense and are telling loyal employees that they should work for 3rd world wages and leave their entire cultural identity and home.

Do Professionals, especially technical professionals need to organize as a labor force? It certainly appears so!

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astonishing

and so not surprising -- this is the future, and i bet they think they're doing their employees a favor.

and note -- they're not offering them positions in any 1st-world countries where the standards of living/pay/benefits match the US -- it's "growth markets" only.

(and i bet they'll hire them for China or India or Vietnam, etc, so they could train locals -- and then fire them after)

completely possible

another thing they might be doing is getting some "American help" to offshore outsource even more jobs, contracts and have "American workers" who know the "culture of America" like local sales people.

But one thing beyond we now know IBM is simply using this latest economic downturn as an excuse to offshore outsource their entire workforce to cheap labor markets....

is that is also proves it's all about labor arbitrage.

Asshats. I hope all of their products rot in hell for this.

I'm sorry but I think Americans should create start up companies pay everyone great wages and plain kick the ass of IBM to bankruptcy.

I can imagine that

 Can you imagine this? Rip your kids out of school, abandon your relatives, leave your entire country....just to be able to eat?

I can imagine that- I grew up knowing and talking to litterally hundreds of people who did just that.

United States, NAFTA has worked it's magic.  You now have the same economy as Mexico.

 

 

 

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

hourly wages vs. corporate (income?) accounting: another scam?

It seems, so long as workers can be fired, that workers take a rather large risk, but are only left with the metaphorical crumbs from the table. Workers are never allowed to make the big money, that is only right for the risk takers and bigwigs like CEOs, or so we're often told.

It seems workers have been scammed.