IBM layoffs now top 1,200

IBM has laid off over 1,200 employees in the last few days, according to a union organising group for the company's staff.

Alliance@IBM's homepage reports job cuts of 1,202 staff members, a collated figure gathered from the organisation's members sending in their severance letters, so-called "resource action" documents.

Lee Conrad, the coordinator of the group, told Bloomberg that most of the job cuts were in the US, although some were in Canada.

Ex- and current IBM employees have been posting about the cuts on the Alliance@IBM's job cuts reports community page, with one saying he had been laid off after 33 years with the company.

Doug Shelton, an IBM spokesman in the US, would not confirm the number of redundancies to Bloomberg.

"IBM is constantly rebalancing its workforce,” he said. “That means reducing in some areas and hiring in others – based on shifts in technology and client demand. This allows IBM to remain competitive and relevant in an industry that is constantly changing.”

IBM's current global workforce is 433,362 employees. It no longer releases geographic breakdown information on its staff, but at the end of 2008, the company had 115,000 workers in the US out of its 398,455 worldwide.

The company yesterday reported annual revenue for 2011 of $109.9bn, up from $99.9bn the year before, and net income of $15.6bn, up from $14.8bn in 2010. ®