IBM Layoffs Hit: Rometty Speech Out Of Way, Big Blue Workers Out Of Jobs

IBM layoffs, delayed a day so CEO Ginni Rometty could give a speech about supercomputers to an audience in Spain, hit at least three states Thursday morning. The layoffs were the first reported as IBM takes a torch to its worldwide workforce, casting as many as 15,000 jobs onto the ash heap.

According to reports from the IBM employee organization Alliance@IBM, the layoffs were supposed to begin yesterday, February 26, with a series of cryptic “15 minute meetings” scheduled at several plants. But with Rometty delivering a keynote address at a mobile telecomputing conference in Spain, those meetings were rescheduled for today — reportedly to keep attention centered on Rometty’s speech.

On January 1 of 2012, Rometty, 56, became the first woman to lead IBM in the company’s 102-year history, only to stand by helplessly as earnings dropped for the last seven straight quarters. Her main solution has been to get rid of workers. In her first year on the job, she spent more than $800 billion on “workforce restructuring,” more than twice the previous year’s total.

In 2013, the number of worldwide IBM employees fell by 0.7 percent, the first time in a decade that the overall IBM head count has dropped from one year to the next.

The previously close-mouthed IBM confirmed Thursday morning that a new round of layoffs was underway, though in a statement, the company described the job cuts as an effort to “rebalance its workforce.”

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin said that by 9:40 am, more than 100 workers at the IBM plant in Essex Junction were told that their services were no longer required. Shumlin said that he believed the total number of layoffs would come to about one-third of 419 slashed from the same facility just eight months ago.

Layoffs were also hitting two other Vermont IBM facilities, Shumlin announced.

“IBM worked very hard both here in Burlington and in White Plains to keep this reduction as limited as they possibly could,” the governor said.

According to Lee Conrad of Allaince@IBM, which monitors layoff reports through postings on its web site and e-maild, employees at IBM plants in Rochester, Minnestota, and Dubuque, Iowa, were also losing their jobs Thursday morning.

The North Carolina Research Triangle Park IBM facility was also expected to be hit by layoffs, as were IBM plants north of the border in Canada. Job cuts in Tucson, Arizona, started yesterday.

However, IBM reached a deal in upstate New York to keep jobs there and actually add 500 at a state-owned technology center in Buffalo. Layoffs in that area could eventually come, but not until 2016, according to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Spokesperson Doug Shelton, while confirming that layoffs were underway, stressed that the company is investing $2.2 billion in its cloud computing and Watson supercomputer projects, which would create 3,000 new job openings at IBM.