Might more IBM (NYSE: IBM) workers choose in the future to seek union representation?

Look for increased efforts to get IBMers to carry union cards, warns Lee Conrad, the retired IBMer who now serves as national coordinator for Alliance@IBM, the Communications Workers of America local that has tried in vain for years to get Big Blue workers unionized.

“We hope to increase the organizing here in the States and worldwide,” Conrad tells WRALTechWire after attending an international union meeting last week.

“There will be more from the IBM Global Union Alliance soon,” he adds. 

The latest news comes almost two years to the day that Conrad journeyed to the Triangle to picket IBM’s big RTP campus. 

To turn Big Blue into a union shop remains a far-distant goal for labor groups, especially in the U.S. where workers have not been galvanized to join despite job cuts and company “rebalancing” that collectively has sliced IBM’s work force by thousands over the past few years.

While IBM didn’t announce any more job cuts during a conference call last week to discuss its latest earnings, unions representing IBMers overseas and Alliance at IBM, which wants to unionize workers in the U.S., met in Europe to discuss strategy. They agreed on a series of “demands” that call for Big Blue to “protect” its “loyal work force.”

“Haven’t heard of any imminent job cuts but the latest IBM financial report is troubling,” Conrad says.

Meeting in Switzerland, representatives of Global Union Alliance @IBM, alongside UNI Global Union, IndustriALL Global Union and IndustriAll European Trade Union talked shop.

In a statement, the groups said they had developed a “new global strategy” that not only is designed to combat job losses but also to combat what they called “deteriorating working conditions.”

Those demands focus in large part on IBM’s stated goal of achieving $20 per share in earnings by 2015. IBM has reiterated its commitment to that goal even though revenue has declined for eight consecutive quarters and is at its lowest in five years.

Under its “Roadmap” earnings strategy, which some IBmers have branded as “Roadkill,” IBM “has mutated into a machine focused soley on profits,” the unions declared.

The unions want “appreciation” for workers, better working conditions, a “fair” evaluation system, raises, and recognition of unions as “partners.”

The specific demands are as follows:

  • “A company strategy focused not solely on earnings per share but also on the appreciation of IBMers’ contribution to the cause.
  • Improved working conditions, fair evaluation systems and appropriate participation of all IBMers in the success of the corporation by salary increases and other benefits for its employees.
  • “Worldwide recognition of trade unions as partners in social dialogue and partners for collective agreements.
  • “Since the announcement of IBM strategies known as ‘Roadmaps’ in 2010 and 2015, unions say the company has mutated into a machine focused solely on profit. Earnings-per-share became the corporation’s most important goal and a lack of appreciation of its own workers now threatens to undermine the corporation from the inside out.”

The groups also say they will elect a new steering group to help coordinate union activities.

[IBM ARCHIVE: Check out more than a decade of IBM stories as reported in WRALTechWire.]