Alliance@IBM Exposes "Stealth" Offshoring Strategy

IBM has quietly laid off more than 1,300 workers in the U.S. over the past week as part of its ongoing effort to shift work to low-wage workers in India, China and Brazil. The cutbacks were not officially revealed by the company but were uncovered by a coast-to-coast network of IBM employees who belong to CWA Local 1701, Alliance@IBM.  The union's announcement of the job cuts prompted widespread media coverage this week.

The company is required by law to notify targeted workers, so Alliance members were able to piece together an accurate picture of the number of workers affected, according to Lee Conrad, national coordinator of the Alliance.

The cuts are in IBM's fastest-growing Global Services division, where management has been steadily replacing long-time U.S. employees with lower-paid new hires from both the U.S. and overseas. Currently, 15 percent of the company's 355,000 employees worldwide are based in India, but that percentage is projected to grow quickly. The Alliance says that as many as 12,000 additional workers could be trimmed from the company's U.S. workforce within the next year.