On the eve of a summit last month between technology executives and then President-elect Donald Trump, IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty publicly pledged to hire about 25,000 U.S. workers and spend $1 billion on training over the next four years.
But as Bloomberg reports, she didn’t mention that IBM was also firing workers and sending many of the jobs overseas.
In late November, IBM completed at least its third round of firings in 2016, according to former and current employees. They don’t know how many people have lost their jobs but say it’s probably in the thousands, with many of the positions shipped to Asia and Eastern Europe. The firings—known internally as “resource actions”—have continued into the new year.
This month, IBM started notifying more U.S. workers that they would be let go, according to a current employee, who tells Bloomberg that colleagues in the services business are bracing for further rounds.
IBM spokesman Doug Shelton points out that the company generates more than two-thirds of its services revenue overseas. In a statement to Bloomberg he reiterates plans to hire 25,000 people in the U.S. and says IBM will end up adding a net number of jobs over the next four years.
Shelton declines, however, to say how many IBM workers were fired in 2016, but adds the company enjoys an attrition rate that’s historically much lower than the industry average.
It’s still unknown if any employees at IBM’s Client Innovation Center in downtown Baton Rouge facility have lost their jobs. In October, Daily Report reported that IBM company fell 67 jobs short of the 500 full-time equivalent positions it was supposed to create by June 30, 2016, under the terms of its cooperative endeavor agreement with the state. Despite falling short, IBM remained in compliance with the agreement, which allows the company to carry forward jobs created in previous years if those jobs are in excess of the requirements for those years.
