The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us. ... To put political muscle behind these ideas they created a formidable political machine. One of the few journalists to cover the issues of class -- Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post -- wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperate action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the religious right -- Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition -- who mounted a cultural war providing a smokescreen for the class war, hiding the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the cause of privilege.

In a book to be published this summer, Daniel Altman describes what he calls the "neo-economy -- a place without taxes, without a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds -- and [said Altman] it's coming to America." He's a little late. It's here. Says Warren Buffett, the savviest investor of them all: "My class won." Look at the spoils of victory: Over the past three years, they've pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts -- almost all tilted towards the wealthiest people in the country. Cuts in taxes on the largest incomes. Cuts in taxes on investment income. And cuts in taxes on huge inheritances. More than half of the benefits are going to the wealthiest one percent. You could call it trickle-down economics, except that the only thing that trickled down was a sea of red ink in our state and local governments, forcing them to cut services for and raise taxes on middle class working America. Now the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling $2.75 trillion over the next ten years. If link is broken, view Adobe Acrobat version [PDF--43 KB].

• "Inspiring BCS Team" by "ibmfree". Full excerpt: BM BCS Canada has recently created a team called "Inspiring BCS" to address people's concerns and build a 'high performance culture'. This is IBM's way of saying "Oh my God, how do we stop the flood of PwC Consultants currently leaving us?" I think this team, conducting focus groups and comprised of a cross-section of people, is an absolute insult to those PwC people who have been telling the IBM drone managers how things need to change. And it is pretty obvious that this is not designed to achieve change in IBM's draconian policies but simply to stem the tide of resignations. The team can't even get people to attend the focus group sessions. Last year, the head of IBM BCS was told at a meeting that if she did not do something about the way IBM was treating people she would be faced with a huge exodus of people. Her response was "Where will they go?". Guess she is finding out now. My big question here is: What IBM policy has pissed you off the most? There are lots to choose from,
  • losing a weeks vacation
  • the non-compete policy
  • 20% drop in per diems
  • forced to take flights at bed times
  • HR department lies
  • no reimbursement for MBA courses
  • pay cuts (including 2% reduction)
  • poor benefits coverage
  • the high deductible applied to prescription drugs before the % reimbursement is calculated
  • the 99% salary, 1% commission
  • the bureaucracy required to get anything done
  • the use of S&D to sell work they know nothing about (like process improvement)
  • getting a 0% bonus while partners and office stay get theirs
  • the loss of the $750 monthly travel allowance for being on projects where you are out of town 3 weeks out of 4 for more than 3 months
  • the use of resource managers to hound you to take projects that are well beneath your status (i.e. doing clerical work when you have been managing multi-million dollar engagements)
  • the lack of a boss or working for an IBM drone who does not know what you do?
  • the continued use of that lousy IBM corporate card while not being allowed to collect points
  • flying economy on long-term projects overseas because IBM does not grant business class on flights under 8 hours
  • being a pawn for hardware sales and outsourcing
  • being seen as a software implementer and not a management consultant
  • realizing that a PwC band 3 - made an IBM Band 7 - is far more qualified than many IBM bands 8 and up
  • the IBM attitude of moral superiority
  • the influence of IBM HR and IBM Legal in day-to-day business
  I could go on but I would love to here what others pick as their #1 IBM piss-off.



• "Dose of reality" responds in "An excellent list". Full excerpt: Just think how easy it was for you to come up with your list of problems – you were probably drafting it as fast as you could type. Testimony to just how far away from viable and self-sustaining HR policy and employee-related business processes we have come. The focus groups are just another example of “red-herring” lip service. They must know what is causing the propensity to resign. The only ostensible benefit of focus groups would be to find out the relative pain from each of the daggers they have thrown in the last few years, perhaps to see if they can pull one or two out.

  The problem is that laws of inertia and motion work both ways. Until now, they relied on inertia, and a perceived bad employment market to stem the tide. Even if they were able to turn back the clock on the majority of these bad policy decisions, the anger and sense of having been cheated that is felt by the vast majority of staff will still lead them to seek employment elsewhere. The other problem is that the current business economics, revenue opportunities and resource capital that remain are woefully inadequate to enable a material give back of that which has been taken away from staff the past few years. Add to this the improving employment market, and it is game, set, and match, unless they can bring themselves to suck it up and let the quarterly numbers dip until they can regroup organizationally and strategically. That will never happen with the current regime that has been hanging on with their “gimmick of the month” strategy for years.

  It is a classic case of whipsaw perpetrated by a group of overmatched, overblown ex-consultants who are currently running BCS. While I keep my nose out of the business of the rest of the non-BCS organization, I would be interested in knowing if they are experiencing the same sense of dissatisfaction and revolt. If they are, we are really in trouble. As far as my #1 issue, it would have to be the lack of pay for performance, followed closely by the devaluation of salary levels that were supported by artificial “external” salary benchmark analyses.

• "Mum is the word" by "TheGrumpyOne". Full excerpt: I'm a band D in IGS in the US. If I tell you anything more than that, I run risk of being identified and terminated. I will tell you that most of the IBM business units are a lot more worried about replacing current employees with offshore ones than we are about hiring new employees. It looks like it will continue that way through August. That would explain why so many people are bewildered by why they aren't getting responses from HR. If you aren't able to find a job somewhere else, check back with us at IBM in early September.



• "Not Confused at All" by "midwest_al". Excerpt: To improve morale, the employee needs to feel valued and *rewarded*. Would having a manager talk to you more often really improve your morale if you knew your job was targeted for outsourcing? Also, having been the 'survivor' of outsourcing myself, the morale gets bad there too, because now those people wonder if their turn is next. When I worked in the BCS / Financial area, the managers talked to us a lot about delivering customer value, increasing utilization and so on with no focus on rewarding us for all the work we were expected to do. After a while, all you see is their lips moving and a lot of gibberish noise coming out. My morale did not improve by listening to them talk, especially the higher level management who communicate like politicians... big twists of facts, who make noise, but really say nothing. Last year, I traveled 100% of the time with 111% utilization and got no extra compensation for that. Needless to say I have left for another company that pays me more for doing the same thing. But since I now feel adequately compensated, my morale is doing quite fine. So when you have managers and executives who make their quarterly profits a priority, they could care less about morale, since that is not their motivating factor.