IBM plans to axe 8,000 jobs across Europe

About 2,000 jobs will be cut in the UK and Ireland

IBM is planning to cut 8,000 staff in Europe, including up to 2,000 in the UK and Ireland, according to a report by Channel Partner Insight (CPI).

Citing a source familiar with the matter, CPI said that IBM has already informed regional country headquarters about its intentions.

When contacted by CPI, IBM UK&I did not confirm the figures but said that the company is reinvesting in the business and makes workforce decisions "to best support our clients on their journey to adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capability".

The company spokesperson added that IBM is making "significant investments in education and skills development for IBMers to better meet our clients' needs".

Ver.di, the second largest union in Germany - where about 2,300 positions are expected to be axed - has raised concerns over IBM's purported move, warning IBM's customers that existing projects will suffer because of job cuts.

"They will be performed by a workforce that has been reduced by around 25 per cent. The working pressure, which is already at a high level, will increase again," it said.

Bert Stach, IBM lead representative at Ver.di, confirmed cuts of IBM staff across Europe but did not give any figures.

"They haven't fired anyone yet; they are trying to make voluntary cuts," he told CPI.

Last week, some media reports said that more job cuts were looming at IBM, with the company warning the employees of its Global Business Services division that a 'consultation process' was underway on job cuts.

The Register reported that the job cuts at IBM would target Services staff across Northern Europe, with nearly 100 employees expected to be fired in the UK alone.

"The reason given was to restructure and re-skill for the hybrid cloud, AI and Intelligent Workflow markets," one IBM insider told The Register.

All UK staff at Global Business Services are at risk, the Register report said, with 325 jobs in Denmark and 70 in Finland, Norway, and Sweden also set aside for redundancies. The new claims from a CPI source go way beyond the previously reported levels of redundancy.

IBM is currently in the process of spinning off its infrastructure services business into a separate company.

The company's service unit, which brings in $19 billion in annual revenues for IBM, offers services related to data centres, servers networking and other IT hardware. IBM intends to split off this unit into a new company with a new name.

After the spin-off, the rest of IBM will focus on more the lucrative area of cloud services. The new firm will have a workforce of around 90,000, leaving 260,000 IBM employees to focus on cloud.

The separation is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.