In Reply to: Will there be some more UK Pensioners soon? posted by Freddy on 14 July 2004 at 06:21:31:
We regret to report that morale within IBM UK has hit an all time low due to the unfortunate publication of details of an internal memo. A copy of the memo had been provided on an unofficial basis to counteract the misunderstanding caused by an earlier memo that we had intentionally fabricated and leaked to the press to give the impression that we were considering aggressive measures to achieve the second quarter financial measurements. The press apparently misunderstood the labels and thought that the original memo was the one that we provided on an unofficial basis and that the second one was the one that we had intentionally fabricated and leaked. The confusion apparently led to the press, without any official approval from IBM, selecting portions of each of the memos and publishing a report which was out of context and intentionally fabricated to make us look bad. We have since changed our unofficial labels to make it clearer in the future which memos are unofficial and which ones are leaked intentionally.
To counteract this drop in morale, we have asked each IBM UK manager to have a one on one meeting with each of their employees within the next 24 hours and explain to them whether their job is one of the 1500 jobs that are affected by the new standard mobility clause and which category of mobility will be invoked for their specific job. Of the 1500 new mobility invoked employees, only 500 (Category A mobiles) will have their jobs moved outright to Bangalore. Category B mobiles will be asked to stay on board for 60 days to train their replacement. The exact number of Category Bs is still being discussed and may change based on how many of the Category A mobiles invoke the double secret handshake rule and are therefore are eligible to be converted to Category B. The remainder of the 1500 will be Category C, but we have not decided exactly what this means just yet.
Any employees that do not have a one on one meeting with their manager in the next 24 hours should assume that their manager is one of the Category A mobiles and should therefore refer to this board as an official source of redeployment plans. Any of the 4,600 people whose status is not changed may make a request to be converted to mobile status. The decision on whether to approve a request of mobile status conversion cannot be made by line management. A new committee will be formed to review and approve all such requests.
Again, we regret the drop in morale but are confident that the actions we are taking will restore morale to its previous level.