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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

The post by Cringely provides no references, which I find odd. I found a Bloomberg wire article [1] about the judgement, but nothing at all about the alleged subsequent retribution.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/technology/23IBM.html

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Recap of the "payroll restructuring":

http://www.informationweek.com/ibm-responds-to-overtime-laws...

Workers' petition, with names and an occasional email:

http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions/ibm1701/signatures

Short legal recap:

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/features/overtime_calif...

That seems to be appalling behaviour by IBM.

I did an intern year with IBM UK in the late eighties and (with hindsight) it seemed to have very good employment practices. I wonder if IBM in the US was once like that, and if so when things changed.

How often do you find out about such insider level information? Even stories like EA Spouse, how much detail do we really know that would be considered deeper than surface-level stuff?

To me it sounds just like he framed what happened in the IT industry in most corporations from 2001 onwards in a 'IBM is evil' manner. Dotcom happened, bombed, local skills got paid less while jobs got shipped offshore or automated away. The post about H1-B visas that he mentions, appears to be what most large corporations do with L1 visas, and that's probably what IBM was doing too.

I agree that some more references are in order. As it is now, all this post does is spread rumors. At least the lawsuit happened but it's hard to tell about the rest from the information we're given.

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