Re: Big Blue workers BLUE in the face

>From the www.siliconvalley.com blog:

http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2008/01/ibm_and_ot_if_you_cant_beat_em_screw_em.html

In January 2006, three current and former IBM tech support workers filed a class action suit claiming Big Blue had illegally deprived thousands of its workers of overtime pay by wrongfully classifying them as exempt under labor law. In November of that year, IBM settled the suit by agreeing to pay a total of $65 million to 32,000 employees. "Litigation of this case would have been lengthy, burdensome and expensive, and IBM chose to resolve it," said a company statement. But the resolution must have been eating at IBM since then, because it's now teaching 7,600 of its employees the meaning of "Pyrrhic victory."

Forced by law to finally pay these workers overtime, IBM has decided to balance things out by cutting their base pay by 15 percent. This means that in order to come out even, these workers will now have to work overtime. But IBM naturally tries to keep overtime to a minimum, and there won't be enough to go around, so, according to company documents, about a third of these employees will end up taking a pay cut, and all because they made the company abide by the law. Did I mention that IBM just reported record earnings and raised its outlook for the year?

One veteran employee who was finally coming out ahead with the OT pay from her 50-52 hours a week, expects those extra hours to disappear. "Anybody who's been in IBM knows that when they look to cut costs, that's where they're going to cut it," she said. "I was so angry I could hardly speak, and it takes a lot to make me angry. I just don't know how IBM expects us to take this and just run with it."

IBM is peddling a different story to anyone who asks. According to a company Q&A script, if a client asks, "What has been the reaction of employees who are being reclassified?", the manager should respond, "They understand this is something we must do under current interpretations of the law and to remain competitive within our industry." Yeah, right. Weasel words from a big blue weasel.