NEW YORK — More than 700 employees at IBM Corp. plants around the United States were told Thursday that their jobs would be eliminated. The cuts may be the beginning of a series of long-feared layoffs instituted by the company as it seeks to cut costs.
In Endicott, N.Y., layoffs hit 220 employees. In San Jose, Calif., the company slashed more than 200 jobs. In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 144 employees were cut. About 150 workers, or 3 percent of the 5,000 employees of IBM's Rochester, Minn., plant also received layoff notices Thursday.
IBM server group spokeswoman Jan Butler said numbers of job cuts were left to the managers of individual plants. Butler declined to confirm the number of employees or plant locations affected.
"It's up to the individual locations to determine where they can find efficiencies," Butler said.
Most of the jobs cut belong to designers of software for the iSeries and zSeries computers, along with some accounting and finance positions, Martin said. The employees will remain on the payroll for 60 days; half will have the opportunity to seek jobs elsewhere inside IBM, Martin said.
"It's based on the premise that we evaluate our business and look for ways to achieve greater efficiency by eliminating those redundancies and consolidating work," Martin said.
Layoff fears were fueled by IBM's earnings report last quarter — its worst performance in more than a decade — and subsequent hints by chief executive Samuel Palmisano that IBM would trim its 320,000-strong work force.