IBM Tech Workers Use Technology to Fight Back

IBM tech workers are using information technology to organize and fight back against a 15 percent pay cut imposed by management recently in what amounts to retaliation against having to pay them overtime.

Over 1,300 of the affected workers so far have signed on to an online protest sponsored by Alliance@IBM CWA Local 1701, demanding that IBM roll back the pay cut for some 7,600 technical support workers who it reclassified on Jan. 21 as being eligible for overtime. The cut affects about six percent of the company's workforce.

Many workers are finding that, even with overtime, the pay cut will cost them thousands of dollars a year. "After 10 years of employment with IBM this reduction places me back at my 2003 salary," said one worker on the petition. Fewer than one third of the workers are working enough on a weekly basis, estimated at 45 hours a week, to break even, according to Alliance@IBM coordinator Lee Conrad.

Ironically, the company's action stems from a $65 million settlement that IBM reached in 2006 to settle a lawsuit with the workers, who charged that they were unfairly being denied overtime and back pay.

Alliance members rely on mass e-mails and website communications to rapidly communicate and mobilize – all the more important since nearly half of the IBM employees work from home or are constantly mobile, said Conrad.

Last year, Alliance members and other IBM unions around the world staged an innovative "virtual strike" at IBM's "island" in the Internet virtual 3-D world, Second Life.  A YouTube video of the Second Life "strike" and the current online petition drive are found at the Alliance website, www.allianceibm.org.