IBM Says 'Couldn't Fire 150K US Workers If We Wanted To' 219
theodp writes "In an e-mail worthy of the Dilbert Hall of Fame, IBM execs responded to Robert X. Cringely's Project LEAN layoff rumors, reassuring employees by pointing out that they've already wiped out too many U.S. jobs to be able to lay off another 150,000. Big Blue's employment peaked around 1985, when it had about 405,000 workers who were acclimated to a long tradition of lifetime employment. IBM puts its current global workforce at 355,766, with a 'regular U.S. population' of less than 130,000."
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm ashamed that he is funded in part by non-profit funds from US taxpayers and makes a bad name for PBS in general.
It IS reassuring... (Score:3, Insightful)
The dollar is dropping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"they've already wiped out too many" (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I hope you find a good new job, and I hope they didn't try to screw you out of part of your severence package.
How many plants can they close? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to work at a company, where the standing joke at headquarters was if a plant (factory) did anything wrong, they would close it. The big boss would say: "Either they make target, or I'm going to close the plant!" Of course, the targets were completely unrealistic, so the next meeting would be: "Well close the plant dammit!!! Close the plant!"
The people at HQ would keep a running tally of how many divisions (plants) were closed that week. 15 plant closures was a bad week, as the company only had 13 plants. At one point, things got so bad they had to purchase a few more plants to make up for the plants they really did close. I'm glad I'm not working for that company anymore.
Yes, it is possible for management to discuss closing more plants than they have, and to fire more employees than they have hired ...
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but what's the good of the analogous "stopped-clock" that is wrong most of the time? You certainly can't depend on it, so even if occasionally correct, you have no way of knowing that until after the fact, so it's completely worthless.
Re:"they've already wiped out too many" (Score:3, Insightful)
These are not mutually exclusive. Our huge trade deficit is a political issue created by international corporations who want to do things their way and hire top lobbyists to get it. The huge trade deficit is not good for Americans, but the international corporations don't give a sh8t.
(By the way, maybe IBM hired 2 guys at $14/hr to do the job of one American at $30. Even if the replacement is lousy, they get an extra one to clean up the first one's booboo's. They thus would save 2 bucks.)
Look on the bright side (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nobody Owes You a Job for Life (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course no one owes anyone anything... But if you don't bother to take care of the people, they tend to "take care" of you. We could have quite easily became another Nazi or Communist country had FDR not instituted his New Deal reforms during the great depression. Free market capitalism works... up until a point.
Re:The dollar is dropping. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you using some wierd definition of "poor" that I don't understand?
Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
As they say in reality television: "You're fired". Two years from now when the market turns up, you'll wait in line to hear the potential employers in your field say "If you had been good; you wouldn't have been let go. Someone would have hired you." and ask, "Are you an alcoholic?"
I haven't had the above said to me, but I've heard accounts from many others. They weren't alcoholics. They chose the wrong initial employer. That is their only "sin".
You should expect a job and expect to be retained; if you do the work assigned. You shouldn't be promoted, but you should be retained. What's happening now is that even those who do good work are not retained and treated like dirt if retained.
Re:The dollar is dropping. (Score:3, Insightful)
Worse yet, many of those goods and services of which you speak are being paid for out of funds that, in previous generations, would have been saved or invested, not squandered. We've been convinced, as a people, that spending every dime to "stimulate the economy" is somehow good. We certainly are stimulating the economy
Re:IBM Town (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems pretty silly that in this 21st century the billionaires can move their funds and trade across the globe in milliseconds... But the ordinary people still need some silly visa permit from the king to move their skills likewise. Trade at the post-industrial level, immigration at the Napoleonic law level?
Kind of a sweet deal for the industry: move your production to whichever country has cheaper citizen slaves knowing the people cannot follow in kind.
Also on his numbers... (Score:2, Insightful)
That 130,000 number is total US employees. Cringely's previous estimate supposedly just included Global Services employees, which only represents a fraction of the total workforce. So if we assume half of all US IBM employees work for global services, that still means IBM needs to hire 85,000 new employees before his estimate is even mathematically possible.
This whole thing reminds me of a scene from the South Park episode, "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow".
Anchor: Any word on how the survivors in the town are doing, Mitch?
Reporter: We're not sure what exactly is going on inside the town of Beaverton, uh Tom, but we're reporting that there's looting, raping, and yes, even acts of cannibalism.
Anchor: My God, you've, you've actually seen people looting, raping and eating each other?
Reporter: No, no, we haven't actually seen it Tom, we're just reporting it.
Isn't journalism so much more fun when you don't have to worry about those damn things called 'facts'?
Great Napoleonic Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The dollar is dropping. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, enviornmental laws, liability obligations, and high labor costs make many types of manufacturing impossible inside the U.S... Restricting imports of those goods would not mean that those goods would be produced in the U.S., it would simply mean that we wouldn't have those goods. You would put the people working at the Best Buy out of work selling Chinese DVD players, but you wouldn't create any jobs making DVD players in the U.S., because making consumer electronics in the U.S. is not possible legally or economicly.
He apparently hates LEAN (Score:3, Insightful)
He wrote: It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring.
LEAN http://www.lean.org/ [lean.org] has nothing to do with foreign hiring. It's a philosophy for process improvement that focuses on eliminating wastes in that process. Such wastes include: excess inventory, re-work, moving things around more than needed. It's about redesigning the process so that there is as little wasted effort and material as possible.
LEAN is well-executed when the culture of a company is changed to empower workers to have more control over the way they do their work - and those employees are encouraged to find better ways to do what they do. For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN. There, an employee who finds a better way to improve a process is rewarded with cash bonuses.
Now it may be that a company has hired a consultant to tell them do do layoffs and they call it LEAN, but that's not what it is.
But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
Re:Great Napoleonic Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Since then, personal rights have remained where they were while the property protections have gotten a lot better (see patents/IP/MAFIAA, WTO/World Bank, banking laws, trade treaties, etc.)
Two hundred years later your status and rights are still at the whim of the sovereign and depend entirely by where you your mother pushed you out. It's high time us humans got something better, wouldn't you say?
Re:You Miss the Point: Hire Plus Fire (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You Miss the Point: Hire Plus Fire (Score:3, Insightful)
Immigration etc. (Score:1, Insightful)
Because goods are free to move, but not people.
Jobs are free to move, but not people.
Oil is free to move, but not people.
Money is free to move, but not people
New Model Army - Another Imperial Day
(honestly, great song)
Re:Sadly, he did write that (Score:2, Insightful)
He's saying it makes no sense for the machine to be non-responsive when allegedly "idle".
Re:IBM Town (Score:1, Insightful)
Some companies will chose 1) and eventually lose to the competition, while chosing option 2) will cause Americans to go over to India and work for those increased wages. What you'll get is [skills]*[wages] being a constant, hence no artificial incentives to outsource/offshore.
If the skilled people are not locked into slavery, they will do what is best for them, including going for higher pay or even starting their own companies. Since here the people with the greatest wages and benifits set the standard, this leads to increased prosperity across the board. It you let Industry set the standard you get a race to the bottom we currently face. Again, we cannot let the employer dictate the lowerst wage since they would use toddlers and slaves, if they could: a controlled open-immigration policy would essentially expand the existing American labor standards to the entire world, with our standard of living to follow that expansion!
To answer the inevitable "stealing my job" question, a properly controlled immigration is no different, or better than a high birthrate. And a properly handled high birthrate can be a great productivity boost for the country (Baby Boomers, Arbeiterjugend, etc.)
Rupert the Borg (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Government hadn't stepped in, every American would now be an employee of The Rockefeller Corporation.
The trouble with Free Markets, is they're usually not. Heard a Pundit on BBC World Service saying we shouldn't worry about Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal because it's a "Free Market" anyone can set up a blog and compete. (Level playing field, my ass.)
Re:Nobody Owes You a Job for Life (Score:3, Insightful)
One would think that the events of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries have shown that the company needs its employees as much as the employees need the company, if not moreso.
A cynical approach to hiring only nets you cynical employees.
Trick question (Score:3, Insightful)