IBM lays off 450 workers from U.S. manufacturing plants

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 7/31/2007

The latest in a string of layoffs the industry titan has made in recent months, IBM Corp. cut some 450 jobs at its United States chip manufacturing facilities on Monday.

Although IBM has announced plans to triple its investment in India to $6 billion in the coming years, the company maintains that this week's job cuts were not the result of off-shoring, but rather of positions that were made "redundant" when IBM merged the technology and manufacturing parts of its chip manufacturing operations.

In an internal memo sent Monday that has been posted on the Alliance@IBM worker union Web site, IBM general manager Michael J. Cadigan wrote that the job reductions were part of an effort to "further streamline our business and improve our position in a highly-competitive industry."

An IBM spokesman confirmed with Electronic News that most of the layoffs were at IBM's East Fishkill location in upstate New York, while others were at its facilities in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Burlington, Vt.  The job cuts affected manufacturing and development jobs in IBM's systems and technology group, the spokesman added.

This week’s actions are just the latest in a series of job cuts the company has made in recent months. In May, IBM announced that it had cut a total of 3,023 jobs during Q2. 

The streamlining seems to be paying off for the company’s stockholders. In regulatory quarterly filings made today to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), IBM reported that it made $4.1 billion in net income during the first six months of 2007, up 10 percent from the same period one year ago. Further, IBM’s stock opened this morning at a price of $114.72, up more than 50 percent from its opening price one year ago on July 31, 2006, of $76.44. IBM’s stock closed at  $110.65 today.