IBM Screws American Workers

I saw this article at Yahoo about IBM's plan to ship close to 5,000 "highly paid" computer programming jobs to India or China.

Here's the best part:

"Some workers are scheduled to be informed of the plan for their jobs by the end of January. After that they will be expected to train an overseas replacement worker in the U.S. for several weeks. The IBM workers marked for replacement have 60 days to find another job inside the company, likely to be a difficult task at a time when IBM is holding down hiring."

One of the major arguments of tort reformers is that big lawsuits injure big corporations, and those injuries cost Americans their jobs. Bullshit.

Corporations have one goal, and one goal only: To make money. If they can lay off their entire workforce and outsource it to India to save money, they'll do it. If they can cut corners on safety to fatten the bottom line, they'll do it. If they can get laws passed to prevent them from being held accountable for any of their actions, they'll not only do it, but then they'll go on to behave even more badly than they did before.

An even more telling part of the article is that IBM managers have concern that the jobs can't be done as well overseas. Translation: IBM doesn't care about getting the job done right, they care about getting it done cheap.

IBM will be taking $300+ million dollars out of the American economy and putting nearly 5,000 Americans out of work for no other reason than to save money. Not that they're hurting: IBM made around $30 billion in profit, and is sitting on roughly $6 billion in cash.

This is a message from John Kerry that sounds pretty good right about now:

"My friends we need a president who understands what's happening in our country. This president lives out a creed of greed for he and his friends. I'm tired of seeing chief executives permitted to take their millions or billions to Bermuda and leave the average American here at home stuck with the tax bill. You know what I call that? Unpatriotic.

.... And when I finish with that tax code, when we finish with that tax code there's not going to be one tax credit left for any company to encourage them to take jobs overseas and forget about the bill and the burden in America."