Note: The Skinny blog is written by Rick Smith, editor and co-founder of Local Tech Wire and business editor of WRAL.com.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – It’s not often a headline causes my blood to boil, but this one did:

“IBM cuts hundreds of jobs, sliver of 400K workers.”

Here’s the first paragraph of the AP story:

“IBM Corp. cut more than 1,500 jobs across a number of divisions Monday, a sliver of the technology company’s nearly 400,000 workers worldwide.”

There’s that word again – “sliver.” (Update, AP: The size of the "sliver" increased by 1,000 Tuesday.)

Am I oversensitive? Well, I’ve been fired. I’ve been “RA’d,” as IBMers call layoffs in a “resource action.” I’ve laid off people. I’ve worked at newspapers that went belly up. I had my pay cut 40 percent to keep a business alive, even as I fought cancer. I have seen my family fight off tears with fear replacing hope.

Yes, I was a “sliver.” I’ve cut “slivers.” I will carry those grim memories to my grave.

Business is business, unfortunately. I’m not naïve. Businesses fail – or make tough decisions to keep from failing. But for such decisions to be treated callously is ridiculous.

The growing band of "slivers" brothers and sisters

If you haven’t had the pleasure of being a “sliver,” believe me, it’s not something you want to experience. In this nightmare economy, “slivers” are getting to be pretty common.

A “sliver” to AP is food on the table for more than 1,600 IBM employees who received 30-day “resource action” notices on Monday. They were “selected” to participate in the work force reduction, as IBM so kindly puts it in the official paperwork that documents the age and position of every person within a work group that is and isn’t affected by the job chop. (

How do IBMers feel about being “slivers” and prospects to become one? Just read the posted by the Alliance@IBM Web site. Some of them are blood-curdling.

But more importantly, this coverage misses the bigger nightmare that continues to unfold for America’s workers.

Yes, the headline at first glance is accurate. A lot of people no doubt glanced at it as they sipped a latte and skipped to the next story.

Yes, more than 2,500 – that’s the latest count from the Alliance@IBM group that wants to represent IBM workers, with the number based on documents fed to the group by IBMers – is a “sliver.”

The missing context of IBM’s cuts

But, here’s the context ignored by AP’s headline and accompanying short story::

1. This “resource action” involves U.S. workers, so the “sliver” comes from a U.S.-based IBM headcount of some 105,000.

2. So is just over 1 percent of 105,000 a “sliver?” Yes, again literally. But let’s not forget that IBM has slashed its U.S. work force by some 30,000 over the last four years.

3. The 105,000 IBM figure is misleading, too, when it comes to core Big Blue workers. The company has made scores of acquisitions in the past four years. So, add in those employees to the mix, and the IBM U.S. core really is shrinking more than the gross figure indicates.

4. IBM likes to point out that its headcount is actually growing overall, standing at nearly 400,000. But many of those new jobs are “offshored” from the States.

5. A good number of the new jobs IBM is creating stateside are call-center tech support spots, such as at a recently opened facility in Iowa. Those aren’t software engineering or research and development jobs.

6. IBM reported record profits for 2009 even as overall revenue declined. The Big Blue bean counters know how to slim, slash, cut and burn with the best. Good for them. But don’t forget those profits came at the expense of some 10,000 U.S. jobs.

7. Finally, The scant AP report didn’t account for hundreds of other jobs that are on the chopping block among IBM’s work forces in the United Kingdom and Australia.

When does the madness end?

Where are those jobs headed? You known darn well where they are headed.

The “sliver” of U.S. jobs shipped overseas in search of lower costs and foreign markets is a flood.

When does this madness stop? The U.S. economy is being torpedoed, capsized and sunk before our very eyes. Real unemployment is at 20 percent. And if this economy slips into a double-dip recession, then watch out.

The depression word will be back. And we won’t be talking about any more “slivers” but bullets to our economic corpse.

Need evidence? If you want some mind-boggling reading about the outsourcing flood, then read this bulletin in the Federal Register about

"Slivers," indeed.

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