IBM fires employees as part of $1bn restructuring programme

Big Blue trims wage bill in the US, following reports of redundancies made in Europe, Asia and South America

IBM is thought to have wielded the axe on many of its US employees yesterday, as it trims its wage bill as part of a $1bn (£600m) restructuring programme.

Employees in New York, Arizona, Vermont, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma and North Carolina were told of their fates yesterday, according to Alliance@IBM, a union dedicated to IBM employees.

In a statement, the Armonk, New York-based company said it "continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients and to pioneer new, high-value segments of the IT industry".

IBM declined to comment when approached by Computing.

According to Alliance@IBM, the company has already fired employees in Europe, Asia and South America this year, and the US job cuts will add to the number of layoffs that Big Blue has made.

The company, which last year struggled to lift revenue as it got to grips with new competitors offering cloud-based solutions, since sold off its x86 server business to Lenovo in a deal worth $2.3bn (£1.4bn).

The firm will now focus on cloud services and data analytics, which could mean that employees in its hardware division are the most at risk of being let go.

Meanwhile, IBM has also confirmed to tech website WRALTechwire that it is no longer including the numbers, ages and titles of employees who have been struck off. The information which used to be distributed to its fired workers as part of its ‘Resource Action' documentation will now be withheld because it claims this "infringed on employee privacy".

Alliance@IBM believes that this is just a way for IBM to hold back on the exact figures of the job cuts.

Last month, IBM revealed how it suffered a five per cent decrease in sales and a one per cent drop in net profit in 2013, leading CEO Ginni Rometty and her team to forgo their bonuses for the year.