http://www.lohud.com/videonetwork/2475786895001/IBM-layoffs-will-impact-hundreds
Armonk-based IBM slashed jobs across the country Wednesday, including more than 700 in Westchester and Dutchess counties.
While
the total number of jobs cut in Westchester was not immediately known, a
staffer in the Somers office who got a layoff notice said she saw 83
eliminations in the marketing and communications department — mostly in
Somers and Armonk.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro said the company cut 697 jobs there — 328 in Poughkeepsie and 369 in East Fishkill.
Molinaro
said the news “is further indication that the national and state
economy remains uncertain. What is certain is that too many families
will have been given devastating news today.”
It appears to be the largest downsizing at IBM in Dutchess County in years.
The
labor organization Alliance@IBM was compiling individual reports of
layoffs in New York as well as Vermont, Massachusetts and North
Carolina, including two posts from workers saying they worked in Somers.
A number of workers told The Poughkeepsie Journal that they or people they know had been dismissed.
Tom
Midgley, president of Alliance@IBM, who works for IBM in Dutchess
County, said Wednesday afternoon that details of the downsizing were
still coming in, but he was sure of two things: “It’s big, and it’s
agonizing for employees to go through this.”
IBM
spokesman Douglas Shelton issued a statement that neither confirmed nor
denied the downsizing, but spoke of a “workforce remix.”
Companies
with more than 50 employees must warn New York state 90 days in advance
if they are laying off 33 percent of their workforce or 250 workers
from a single site. There was no such letter from IBM on file in the
state’s online database.
State
Labor Commissioner Peter M. Rivera said in a statement that he directed
a rapid-response re-employment team to help all of the workers find new
jobs as quickly as possible.
“These
specialized teams will work with each worker to help connect them with
job openings in the Hudson Valley region and many more throughout the
state,” he said.
Staff writers Ernie Garcia and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy,
The Associated Press and the Poughkeepsie Journal contributed to this
report.
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