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IBM Promises To Hire 25,000 Americans As Tech Executives Set To Meet Trump (reuters.com)

IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty has pledged to "hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States" as she and other technology executives prepared to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. Reuters reports: IBM had nearly 378,000 employees at the end of 2015, according to the company's annual report. While the firm does not break out staff numbers by country, a review of government filings suggests IBM's U.S. workforce declined in each of the five years through 2015. When asked why IBM planned to increase its U.S. workforce after those job cuts, company spokesman Ian Colley said in an email that Rometty had laid out the reasons in her USA Today piece. Her article did not acknowledge that IBM had cut its U.S. workforce, although it called on Congress to quickly update the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act that governs federal support for vocational education. "We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving," she said. "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills -- which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting." She said IBM intended to invest $1 billion in the training and development of U.S. employees over the next four years. Pratt declined to say if that represented an increase over spending in the prior four years.

3 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Trumping Obama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's even more interesting that Obama saved millions of jobs during his time in office and Trump could only save 700 out of 3000 jobs that went to Mexico.

  2. Incorrect headline by kimvette · · Score: 5, Informative

    The actual quote:

    "We have thousands of open positions at any given moment, and we intend to hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States," Rometty wrote in a USA Today piece published on Tuesday afternoon.

    Ginni Rometty did not indicate that IBM would hire Americans. They would hire " 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States" - and Ginni did not specify "additional." For all we know they could be laying off 25K Americans and be bringing in 25K H1-B and L-1 workers to replace them.

    Next paragraph:

    IBM spokesman Adam Pratt declined to say how that hiring might be offset by staff reductions or disclose how many people IBM employs in the United States.

    See? It is nothing but DoublePlusGood DoubleSpeak.

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  3. Re:I'm highly skeptical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    > now he's doing a god damn victory tour, who does that?

    Hitler. Literally. The last time someone held post-election political rallies was 1930 germany.

    Fortunately, Trump's rallies seem be kind of anemic. Like the one in Fayetteville, NC Or the one in Iowa where he got less than 5,000 people and had to use the smaller Hy-vee convention hall instead of the adjoining wells-fargo arena.