Big Screw
by John Paczkowski
Posted on January 24, 2008 at 1:24 PM PT
IBM has come up with a novel response to a class-action lawsuit claiming it illegally deprived some 32,000 technical-support employees of overtime pay. Big Blue is settling the suit for $65 million, but it’s slashing the base pay of the employees who filed it by 15%.
“In one swoop, everything I’ve worked for the last seven years is gone,” one employee wrote on a job board maintained by an IBM workers’ group called Alliance at IBM. “All the extra time and hours … have done nothing but give me a 15% pay cut.”
What an astonishingly cold move. More so, because it forces the employees IBM allegedly deprived of overtime pay to work overtime to compensate for their reduced salaries. And that’s assuming they can actually get overtime, which–as one employee told the Associated Press–IBM generally tries to keep to a minimum. “Anybody who’s been in IBM knows that when they look to cut costs, that’s where they’re going to cut it,” said the employee. “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.”
