"Change", my foot. Corporate America goes on just like before, the same tricks, the same dodges, the same hatred of its own employees.

IBM was heavily invested in a place called Research Triangle Park around Raleigh, NC, where I spent some time in '08. There were some 20,000 workers plus in and around Raleigh at several different facilities which were built when the company moved South to avoid the union pressure they were getting up North.

The Carolinas are both right-to-work states, a misleading appellation that ought more accurately to be stated as right-to-work-for-the-lowest-possible-wages-and-zero-worker-protection states because that's what corpo's and their state pol-puppets interpret the phrase to mean. But that doesn't prevent unions from organizing - no state law can accomplish that, and believe me they've tried - and several unions have been working in the Triangle trying to make inroads. It got a lot easier when the dot-com bubble burst and it began to dawn on the techies that they weren't going to be millionaires after all, but it was still uphill going. Right-to-work laws heavily favor predatory employers who historically pull out all the stops smashing local economies that threaten to force wages upward even a little bit.

As the Bush Depression hit harder, IBM - not one of the most innovative thinkers in the corporate world - noticed that the unions were beginning to make a dent with sign-ups. At that point, they did what Jack "The Axe" Welch taught them to do: make Wall Street happy by firing a lot of people and dumping their jobs on the poor schnooks who were left. When it wasn't enough to stop the unions, they began to take a leaf out of GM's book: they outsourced and went global, moving many of the operations in the US offshore to low-wage, low-tax countries.

They still are but they've ramped up a good deal.

The cuts affected IBM operations across the nation, according to a labor union trying to organize IBM's workers.

"It's clear IBM is moving work offshore at a record rate," said Lee Conrad, national field coordinator of Alliance@IBM.

The union reported that IBM had cut more than 1,200 jobs in the U.S. and Canada as of Monday afternoon. Conrad said the total is likely to increase as more information is collected.

Facing increasing competition, IBM has been cutting staff for years. The global technology giant employs an estimated 10,000 in Research Triangle Park. The New York-based company laid off about 10,400 people last year in North America, accordiing to Alliance@IBM.

The cuts are paying dividends, at least on paper. Last year IBM reported a record profit of $13.4 billion, a 9 percent increase over the previous year.

(emphasis added)

Just so we're clear, that's a 10% increase in profits over last year, not an increase to a 10% profit.

You might think a company that cleared $13-and-a-half Billion$ wouldn't have to lay off 1000's of workers, and you'd be right. They wouldn't and IBM isn't doing it because they need to save money, they're doing it because these workers are now redundant. Their jobs have been moved overseas. A la GM, as plants open in Sri Lanka or Honduras or wherever, they close in the US. The US media covers the closings but not the openings. That will come later when no one cares any more.

Meanwhile, globalizing continues and the Bush Depression deepens. A govt of, by, and for the people rather than the corporations could and certainly would have put a stop to this job drain years ago. It didn't, which pretty much proves which side it's on if one has any remaining doubts.

The longer corporate-friendly conservatives in the Dem-Pub party run the show, the faster we will slide into receivership and our long-predicted apocalyptic future. Maybe it'stime to move to Mexico because there's less and less to keep anybody here. Which was, of course, the point of this whole exercise: remove jobs until everyone gets desperate and scared enough to take whatever they can find no matter how shitty the wages and working conditions are. That way employers can buy grunt workers by the pound and skilled labor for what they used to pay the grunts.

The recession has sharply reduced the ranks of technology workers. Staser said the companies that are hiring are looking for a perfect fit.

"There are jobs out there, but it's a buyer's market," Staser said. "The employers can be very specific in what they want. The list of what they're looking for -- the skill set and experience -- is huge."

IOW, they've got what they always wanted: quality, highly-trained workers they can pick up for the cost of a ham sandwich and a Coke.

Yessir, it's a Brave New Corporate World and a lovely place - if you're one of the Masters of the Universe. If not, then not so much.