IBM Laid Off 1,200

Grim news is coming out IBM. The company has recently laid off between 1,000 and 1,200 depending on whose estimates you believe. According to data released by the IBM Employee s Union CWA Local 1701, since Feb. 27, the company has laid off least 1,202 IBM workers. When you consider how short of a span that is the number are truly startling.

According to information that was given out by the Alliance@IBM, an organization for the workers of IBM, the cuts to the staff of IBM include the following positions:

•          GTS Public Sector Delivery/IBM Global Account: 59
•          GTS Delivery Application Hosting: 183
•          Corporate Marketing and Communications: 18
•          STG Systems Agenda Delivery: 106
•          GTS finance: 23
•          GTS Delivery Security Risk Management: 39
•          BT/IT Global Workforce Web Processes: 22
•          Software Group East Region Sales: 40
•          GTS MTS Delivery solutions/support: 23
•          GTS Delivery SSO: 57
•          GTS ITS: 128
•          GTS Delivery Distributed Server Mgmt.: 179
•          AMS Commercial Delivery: 118
•          GBS Consulting Services Industrial Sector: 25
•          BT/IT Application & Infrastructure service Mgmt.: 78
•          ISC Global Procurement: 50
•          GBS Application Innovation Services: 54

So where does this leave IBM for staff? Well the company stopped providing official headcounts to the public a few years back, but according to the information that is available staffing at big blue has looked like this over the past few years, at least for U.S.-based IBM employees,:

•           2011: 98,000
•         2010: 101,000
•          2009: 105,000
•          2008: 115,000
•          2007: 121,000
•          2006: 127,000
•          2005: 133,789

So, as you can see this is really more of a flux than a long-standing downward trend. Some people might even venture to say that they have been weathering the longstanding economic problems better than many other technology companies out there. Still, the workers of IBM should not be complacent about the stability of their positions.  Some of you may have caught our 2010 coverage about the companies plan to get rid of as many as 299,000 between then and 2017. For those of you who missed it here is an excerpt:

“When asked by a human resources publication as to how many people IBM could employ by 2017, head of the IBM Human Capital Management consultant group Tim Ringo replied: “100,000 people. I think crowd sourcing is really important, where you would have a core set of employees but the vast majority are sub-contracted out.” Crowd sourcing involves using several people working on tasks that would normally be done by a full-time employee.”

So job cuts could truly come at any time.  The national director of Alliance@IBM, Lee Conrad, was quick to point out that this is not an unusual time of year for the company to cut down on their staffing. Job cuts by the company are usually made between the months of February and April; so more cuts may be coming down the pike in the near future.

At the current moment the company is not responding to requests for comment on the headcount numbers or the recent layoff of staffers. No details about severance have been announced either.