Union: IBM layoffs accelerating as employees vent

IBM's employees' union is delivering blow-by-blow accounts of Big Blue's layoffs tonight. 

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Wednesday that IBM is looking to cut about 5,000 positions mostly in its global business services unit as it shifts work to India (Techmeme). 

According to the Alliance@IBM site, 1,674 jobs have been cut in application services with employee reports filtering in. IBM's employee union reckons that 4,000 U.S. jobs are on the chopping block. 

Among some of the notable comments:

A letter regarding the transition of work in the Hartford Insurance account:

"Starting next week several Hartford delivery teams will be working directly with fellow IBM team members from India to begin the second phase of our Global delivery solution planned for the Hartford account. The teams will be engaged in a multi-week effort to facilitate knowledge transfer to prepare for migration of specific work activities to global delivery counterparts later in 2009. Your continued support and leadership is critical to ensure our overall success and to ensure we continue to deliver high quality cost effective solutions that IBM committed to the Hartford. Please ensure you and your teams actively support this effort."

And.

I work for IBM Asia Pacific Region and currently with IBM Australia - a 26-year veteran with IBM. Just been told that I am terminated along with many others here, although the region kept reporting increase in business results!

And.

1st line manager confirmed last week that there will considerable pressure to cut jobs, regardless of current staffing levels, workloads etc. Even if a dept. is under budget they will have to cut staff. Hope they remember to be generous with those severance packages - especially considering some of the directions given to us by our managers.

And. 

I'm an IBM employee who is often frustrated by the secrecy at the top and IBM's unwillingness to be honest about the layoffs.... err, resource actions. However, I don't think IBM is immune from the global economic forces that are leading to a more global workforce, the shifting of jobs from high-paying countries to lower-paying companies,etc. Do you really expect IBM to be the only company not having layoffs in this economy?