Slashdot Mirror
IBM Shifts 14,000 Jobs to India
Omar Khan writes "The New York Times reports, 'Even as it lays off up to 13,000 workers in Europe and the U.S., IBM plans to increase its payroll in India this year by more than 14,000 workers.' Slashdot previously covered the black-and-blue strike, in which the union wondered, 'if other cost cutting mechanisms could achieve the same effect without cutting so may jobs.'"
Here is the IBM Union website, if anyone is interested.
I guess a programming major insn't enough. Now I need to learn Indian as well.
Maybe you need to learn to be culturally literate. "Indian" isn't a language. Likewise, "programming" isn't a major. It's a skill. Computer science is a major. That's like saying "typing" is your major rather than, say, English.
The official language of India is Hindi. But English is the language of business, politics, and technology.
To the USA and EU. The jobs disappearing from EU were preceeded by US layoffs some time ago. And it is not just IBM, but I think that many here know that already.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gartner just released a study of the top five reasons offshore deals go bust. I hope IBM was paying attention. It sounds like a lot of companies jump into these deals because of the labor differential and then find out later it wasn't such a good deal after all. There are a lot more factors to consider than just free trade, losing American jobs, and profit. Long-term viability has got to be high on the list of things to consider, right? (My blog on this)
US labor force participation (the percent of population with a job) in 1960 was 59.4%, in 1970 was 60.4%, in 1980 was 63.8%, and is now at 66%. So it is fair to say that US labor force participation is also historically fairly high.
It is down from the all-time high of 67.1% in 2000, but the bubble burt, you know.
It just doesn't work that way. Fact is companies are under enormous stress (from shareholders) to increase profits year by year.
You can do this 1 of 2 ways, either increase revenue or decrease costs.
So the cost saving is *never* passed on to the consumer, it's passed on to the shareholder, via a larger reported profit and an increase in the share price.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
no, he doesn't have a strange definition. YOU are just using the wrong numbers. The "unemployment numbers" are false. Those numbers are only the number of people actively looking for work as reported to the govt. the real measure is the number of people actually working divided by the number of people elligible to be in the workforce (this is the participatory labor percentage) and that is currently at an all time high, or damned near it. Unemployment numbers during WW2 were not 0%, they were very low but not at 100%. Mechanization of production has rpetty much assured that that circumstance will not happen ever again, however.
Not necessarily. Stock is bought "used" unless it's from an IPO.
...money speny buying stock (or stock-price appreciation caused by businesses) goes pretty much to the rich, accelerating the concentration of wealth.
Where did he say "stock"? He said "investment."
- It means investing money in banks: giving everyone else a better chance for a loan at a lower rate.
- It means investing in new companies: giving people jobs, new/better goods and services, and opening up potential for others to invest (shareholders).
- It means starting your own company, that's an investment, too.
- And yes, it means investing in the stock market. And while you may think they are buying the stock "used," if no one buys the stock, the price of the stock goes down because there are more sellers than buyers, and that affects the underlying company in many different ways.
When I buy IBM stock, IBM doesn't see a penny of that money; some goes to middlemen, and the rest goes to a former IBM stockholder.
Uh huh... right. And what happens when IBM pays you a dividend on your shares? And what happens when you sell those shares for a profit somewhere down the road? And what happens when IBM has more power to leverage it's higher share prices.
It's not like you're just paying someone for a piece of worthless paper.
Since 86% of stock is owned by the wealthiest 10%...
Source of this statistic?
Wow. You are stunningly ignorant about the stock market. How does purchasing equity concentrate wealth elsewhere? You have purchased SOMETHING. You can earn profit on it (indicated above). You are investing in the economy.
I have trouble imagining what kind of economic efficiency, or society, we will have when a (relative) handful of people own everything, and the rest of us are serfs.
The reason you may have trouble imagining this is because it is ludicrous. The economy is a pie. The richer among us have a large share of the pie. When the economy grows, the pie gets bigger. Their piece of pie grows, yes -- but so does everyone else's.
It's not a zero sum game. That's just something those interest in class warfare like to put out there for scaremongering.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.