Thread regarding IBM layoffs

@1hvay what’s happening in Belgium is happening everywhere in the West. Leaders in the ‘90s made outsourcing decisions that have led to us being at this point.

I heard from IBMers between 100-150 left again IBM Belgium with a VLP. VLP is not a layoff as you sign an agreement you leave the company. Where is the added value for the customer and IBM. You pay staff money to leave (=cost) and you hire cheap staff outside Europe (lower quality, investment from zero) cheap prices for the customer in Belgium but on the end, if Belgian People have no job anymore, what's left ? A Ghost economy with some directors, managers, shareholders and the real work being done in China and India. On the end, China and India will lead the World very soon as managers, shareholders and directors can be replaced as well. And it's not only IBM. Try to find a job as 40+ in Belgium at Microsoft, PwC, Deloitte ........ the answer is: experienced but to expensive. Cheap is the new whalala in IT. Being an IT Director at the age of 30 is no exception anymore. Cheap is good and maximum 10 years of experience. More is not cheap enough. Continue like this. China and India will soon take over everything.

Update. On April 1th, the first employees who signed-up for VLP are leaving.

Update. Voluntary leave plan is being deployed. I know already some employees who are signing up for voluntary leave. No real redundancies for the moment.

Meeting of Feb 27th was cancelled because there was nothing so say (nothing on conditions, ...)

Second information session scheduled by unions on Feb 27.
Updates will follow.

Looks like UK and the Netherlands will be affected too –

https://www.facebook.com/alliancemember/posts/1615933305211314
https://www.facebook.com/alliancemember/posts/1612524452218866

This makes me sad to hear. I did a secondment in Belgium many years ago. Some excellent technical staff in GTS and not all are close to retirement. It is a shame but they have lost a lot of high profile bids in the past years, not due to the local staff but due to the pressure to use poor quality and poor performing offshore teams. Removing 70-90 staff will wipe out the country. Maybe it’s time to reach out to some of them and see how they are doing.

Additional information. IBM Belgium is aiming to reduce headcount by 70 to 90 people (most in GTS) through voluntary leave. Number however not 100% sure.
No “real” layoffs at this moment but when management does not reach the number, my best guess is that in Q2/Q3 we see another round.

Again and again and again a restructuring. Go on strike. This is not acceptable anymore. IBM left a lot of social disasters. I'm in still Outplacement and still haven't a job. The Outplacement Office, a Manpower Institute is just a cash cow earning a lot of money on the layoffs. The feedback I got when applying for jobs is humiliating me: What is this for an oldstyle CV ? Why didn't you get education on BPMN, UML, TOGAF, HTML coding, JavaScripting, SSCM, MicrosoftAzur KPI tooling kits, ........ You only know old style knowledge. And so on and so on. Hope I'll find a new job soon and I wish all the other families of the social disasters IBM created the last years a new life and a good job.

GTS NA needs a cleanup big time. They have way too many internal bloat teams getting in the way of supporting the clients. Don't even get me started on the nepotism run amok, its truly a disgrace.

GTS will be broken into 3 parts. TSS which will be spunoff or move to Server division (it depends on if IBM can sell Power and storage), Cloud which will move under GBS, and the remainder which will be spunoff as a give to get. (IBM guarantees you their perform work if you are within a certain cost range)

This is true. GTS is unable to deliver because it is being cut short by IBM management. There are simply not enough people left to do the job. And now they are axing again.
GTS will indeed cease to exist.

I work in the UK in GBS. We are still quite dependent on GTS for many of our large clients unfortunately. However, there have been a string of failures over the years that have accelerated over the past 18 months. GTS has been disqualified from my sector as they simply cannot deliver. As in, they can’t even assign staff once a deal is signed, backtracking on sold capabilities, or reneging on contracts. We got approval to use contractors or subcontract to body shops instead. Many GTS people have been cherry-picked to come to GBS or SWG over the years too.

EWC = European Work Counsil

European Wax Center ?

I have read the EWC minutes of Fed 13. This looks very bad for the Nordics, UK, Austria,Belgium,....
When looking at Belgium alone, this will be it. GTS will probably cease to exist in the context we know today. After this one, Belgium will stall and crash.

21mb. Can you share the details?

I've found the EWC communication on this on intranet, indeed, this is the big one for Europe for Q1 2020.

I did not say there is a COA32Bis filing. Unions only distributed a flyer with general information on the topic.
What I do know is there will be a workforce rebalancing at IBM Belgium.
By combining the two events could mean management is perhaps thinking in selling off a business unit. More news to come in the following days.

I used to work in M&A for a big management consultancy in Europe. I know that filing of CAO32bis is directly related to divestiture activity. There is a piece of the company that will be sold. Do you know which business unit are the employees in the union in the CAO32bis filing?

Only IBM Belgium (Brussels) seems to be affected for now. We could see the number of layoffs between 30 and 115 range but it can be higher.

Hello! I've just seen a lot of opened positions within the IBM career site. I also accept offer later last year and waiting for arriving in
March to one of the Central Europe office. May I be affected ?

Two weeks ago, belgian employees received a flyer on what is called CAO32bis from the Unions. This handles about the employee rights in case they are integrated or sold to another company.
Can it be IBM Belgium is prepping a sale of a particular unit?