Major outsourcing prediction from Cringely. ------- The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week's 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week's "job action," as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.
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All this is supposed to happen by the end of 2007, by the way, at which point IBM will also freeze its U.S. pension plan.
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But in the end they don't care, which shows that only the reaction of Wall Street matters anymore. Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM? |
