By Amy Thomson March 2 (Bloomberg) — International Business Machines Corp. , the world’s largest computer-services provider, fired almost 500 workers in the U.S. and that number may rise, according to employee advocate Alliance@IBM. The cuts are happening around the country and across several divisions, said Lee Conrad , national director for the alliance , which represents some employees. IBM terminated 10,400 people in the U.S. and Canada last year, Conrad said. “It’s pretty much across the board,” Conrad said in an interview yesterday. “We have reports of around eight business units being impacted.” Expenses for workforce reductions at IBM will probably be about the same this year as in the past two years, according to a person familiar with the plans. Work has shifted overseas as IBM coped with sales drops in three of the past four quarters. Most of the restructuring costs this year will be from Europe and Asia, said the person, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public. “We continually remix our skills and structure to meet the changing needs of our clients,” Doug Shelton , a spokesman for Armonk, New York-based IBM, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to comment further. IBM had $474 million in costs related to global job cuts last year and $737 million in 2008, according to its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Software and Services The cuts reported yesterday represent less than 1 percent of IBM’s workforce of 399,409 as of Dec. 31. They come less than two months after IBM said full-year profit will be at least $11 a share, up from a previous forecast of $10 to $11. The company has been working to align resources behind its more profitable software and services divisions. Alliance@IBM is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and is seeking union recognition at IBM. The group verifies the job losses through employees’ severance documents. About 5,000 IBM workers have signed up on the group’s Web site , expressing support, and about 350 are dues-paying members, Conrad said. IBM rose $1.41, or 1.1 percent, to $128.57 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday. The stock has declined 1.8 percent this year. To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Thomson in New York at athomson6@bloomberg.net
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IBM Cut Almost 500 Jobs Across the U.S. Today, Employee Labor Group Says
