5/10/04

Demonstration at IBM La Gaude
Site employees worried for their jobs

On Thursday, May 6th, from 7:30 to 10:00AM, employees from IBM Microelectronics (40 people) demonstrated their fear to see their jobs disappear in the near future. The people involved, willing to remain IBM employees, distributed an information handout explaining their situation to other site employees. It was written with the cooperation of all representative unions - CFDT, CFE CGC, CGT, FO, SNA .

More than 300 hundred people participated in ad-hoc discussions about the current situation as well as future threats to employment on the site.

In the last 10 years, several downsizing operations have resulted in a reduction of the local IBM workforce from 1200 employees downto 650 today.
During the same period, IBM?s profits have increased, doubling in 2003 to reach a record of $7.58 billion (1).

As the result of the recent sale (2) by IBM of certain microelectronics businesses to AMCC, the current operation threatens 55 people in France (40 in La Gaude and around 15 in the Paris area). One possibility, which is particularly feared by the employees, includes a transfer to AMCC France with highly uncertain conditions.
In the US, several IBM employees have just recently been transferred.

AMCC France was created last January, to host another group of 53 people sold by IBM last year along with their networking activities.

If this transfer occurs, the La Gaude site will have witnessed within the last 6 months a decrease of around 20% of regular IBM employees.

Further demonstrations/actions will take place depending on the reaction of the IBM management.

(1) http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2003/flash/fr_cfs_cse.shtml
(2) <http://www.amcc.com/Compinfo/whatsnew.htm>
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/news/2004/0413_power.html