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April, 2000
 Join your fellow employees who are fighting for your benefits - Join the Alliance! Retirees, Vendors, Contractors, Temps, and Active Employees are all eligible to become members of the Alliance. |
Highlights for week ending June 23, 2001
|
Call to Action: During the next week, the US Senate will be actively debating the Patients' Bill of Rights. PLEASE call your senators and suggest that in addition to considering patient's rights relative to their HMOs, that they also consider what the rights of retirees should be once they retire from an employer who has promised them lifetime non-contributory health care as part of their retirement package... CALL your senators and suggest they consider introducing a senate version of HR 1322, either as a stand-alone bill or as an amendment to the Patients' Bill of Rights. And if your house representative isn't yet signed up as a cosponsor for HR 1322, do a little nagging on that side of Congress as well. Thanks! Congress will act if we let them know that this is SO important to us that we'll remember at election time... |
- "jamshydt"
comments eloquently on the question "Why a union?" Excerpts:
"We have allowed the trolls to put us on the defensive. They choose
to ignore the immoral actions of IBM's mercenary management and instead
fabricate or exagerate allegations of union malfeasence. Yet, they ignore
the fact that the current regime has continually reneged on commitments
to employees and put the future of IBM at risk. After all, who was responsbile
for these actions..."
- Red Herring: Phone
union attempts dial-up Internet connection. Excerpt: "Endicott,
New York, the birthplace of IBM (NYSE: IBM), has long been a town of
opportunity and myth. There was a time when the portrait of the company's
legendary founder, Thomas Watson, hung higher in the local schools than
those of Lincoln and Washington, and a job at IBM was considered the
ultimate achievement, one that generally lasted a lifetime." If
link is broken, view Adobe Acrobat version [PDF-41
KB].
- Wall Street Journal: While
Executives See Their Pensions Grow, Regular Workers See Their Benefits
Shrink. Excerpts: "It's also part of a little-known sideshow
to the spectacle of surging executive compensation in recent years.
Word of CEOs rewarded with millions of dollars for enhancing profits
through layoffs has often provoked public indignation. But the ever-widening
gap in retirement income between regular workers and executives has
gone largely unnoticed by regulators, policy makers and investors. That's
true even though in the past decade, many big companies have been setting
up or improving special retirement packages for their highest-paid employees
while freezing or trimming pension, medical and other retirement benefits
for millions of lower- and middle-income workers."
"International Business Machines Corp. discloses that it has an executive pension plan and reports the plan's liability separately -- but not the liability for a second, less-elite IBM executive pension plan. A spokeswoman confirms this. In January 1995, IBM moved the bulk of its work force into a 'pension-equity' plan, saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing benefits, even as it set up its special pension plan for executives. A spokeswoman says IBM found that its plan for the regular work force was 'overly generous' compared to other companies' plans. She says IBM also sweetened contributions to its 401(k) plan after deciding that that program was less competitive." If link is broken, view Adobe Acrobat version [PDF-107 KB].
- Wall Street Journal: Companies
Reduce Contributions To Employee 401(k) Savings Plans. Excerpts:
"Many companies are putting fewer dollars into their 401(k) savings
plans, according to regulatory filings, even as many workers are more
dependent than ever on such plans for their retirement. Workers are
more reliant on the retirement-savings programs in general because so
many employers have cut back the traditional pension benefits they provide."
If link is broken, view Adobe Acrobat
version [PDF-80 KB].
- Annex
Research’s Five-Year Forecast for IBM: An Unenviable Legacy: New
IBM CEO to Inherit Sluggish Giant; Milking the Pension Fund-New LOB.
Excerpt: "Unenviable, because IBM’s illusion of prosperity
has been created by financial and accounting trickery, such as stock
buybacks, tax reductions, or the milking of the IBM pension fund, which
we jointly dubbed several years ago as Big Blue’s new 'financial
engineering' line of business." ... "If the current trends
continue, the milking of the IBM pension fund may account for nearly
$2 billion or 19% of IBM 2001 pretax profit. And that would make this
'financial LOB' bigger than the profit IBM earns from all of its servers;
and more than double the pretax earnings from technology, PCs or global
financing."
- Dow Jones News Service: Pension Returns Loom Large In Many Companys' Earnings: Study Excerpt: As Wall Street's scrutiny of pension plan income intensifies, a new study shows that nearly a third of big U.S. companies are getting part of their earnings from the plans - sometimes a significant part. The report, issued last week by Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. accounting analyst Jane Adams, also hints that companies can use pension accounting to manage their earnings by changing assumptions to boost the amount of pension income that can be factored into operating income. Thirty-four companies, the analyst said, including giants such as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Verizon Communications (VZ), raised their expected return rates and thus benefitted their earnings without apparent justification based on past performance.
- A new retirement security advice bill, which would allow your employer to give you individualized investment advice, was just introduced in the U.S. House... The articles listed below give some pros and cons of the new bill; based on the list of those lined up to back it vs. those against it, my guess is that it isn't going to help baby boomers amass any new retirement funds; read through the articles and form your own opinion. Then, one more time, use the bill as an opportunity to let your reps in Washington know how you feel about retirment issues. See links to additional information...
- In a new book, White
Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioriation of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate
America, author Jill Andresky Fraser fingers the "merger
frenzy," ushered in by federal and state regulatory changes, for
the layoffs, longer work days, shrinking benefits packages and the rise
of contingency workforces that have beset white-collar workers since
the early 1980s. As soon as hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts and
corporate bustups dominated the landscape, financial goals took priority
over all other business considerations, making cost cutting, layoffs
and benefit reductions the order of the day. The single-minded pursuit
of these strategies, Fraser opines, has gradually transformed the paternalistic
workplace familiar to white-collar workers circa 1979 into our present
Darwinian arena, which Fraser characterizes as a sweatshop.
Page 72 of the book states: "Anyone who discounts the worsening effect of pension erosion on the quality of people's lives should stop by 'The IBM Pension Club,' an Internet chat room that got launched during May 1999 by a disgruntled employee...the site managed to attract fifteen thousand 'hits' per day."
- Austin American Statesman: Business Focus: Turning To Foreign Labor.
Excerpts: BANGALORE, India -- Betty Coulter is a typical 21-year-old
college grad from Illinois. She wears bell-bottom jeans and is a faithful
fan of "Friends" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Or so says Betty, if asked, while taking calls from Americans. Her real
name would be difficult for those callers to pronounce: Savitha Balasubramanyam.
And if they listen closely, her Midwestern accent has a touch of South
Asian. Balasubramanyam is Indian. She is a member of a booming business
trend in southern India that is saving Western companies millions of
dollars and earning young college graduates here their first real rupees.
Thousands of Indians right out of college line up for the jobs. They
get months of speech training in American or British accents, depending
on the client they represent. They bone up on sports terms and slang
and a good dose of "Baywatch" and "Friends" to bridge
the cultural divide between Bombay and Boston. Balasubramanyam earns
just $213 a month on the overnight shift. She takes dozens of calls
from customers of a U.S. company that she can't identify, because some
clients don't want Americans knowing their calls get answered in India.
Read full article in Adobe Acrobat
format [84 KB].
- A new Web site has been started for former employees of IBM U.K. See
http://www.communigate.co.uk/hants/ukexibmersinformationsite/
- Poughkeepsie Journal: IBM head gets honorary knighthood in Britain. Excerpt: Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom, has put IBM Corp.'s CEO and chairman, Louis V. Gerstner Jr., on her ''birthday honours'' list to be an honorary Knight of the British Empire. It was given for ''services to e-commerce and to education,'' the announcement read, adding that the queen approved the nominations on recommendation of the foreign secretary. The nomination comes even as another part of the British government, Inland Revenue, continues auditing IBM's tax returns, now several years in the works. Carol Makovich, an IBM spokeswoman, said the audit is ''still ongoing, but it's very routine.'' If link is broken, view Adobe Acrobat version [85 KB].