Oh. My. God. IBM Offers to Move Jobless Workers to India, Where They Can Earn Pennnies on the Dollar!

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 3:25 PM on February 3, 2009.

I can't help but think that this just smacks of a Yes Men hoax.

But if it's not, it almost leaves me speechless (from Informationweek, via the Angry Bear) ...

The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

And yet ...

It'd actually be a perfectly logical extension of the corporate globalization project. Right now, goods and cash flow freely across borders, but human capital isn't as mobile (they're working on that). Usually we think of human mobility as people headed towards the big money in wealthy countries. But if you're in a wealthy country and you have a lot of unemployed people hanging around, why not ship 'em to the 3rd world? They won't use up public services, they're not around to cause any trouble, and you can always hire 'em back when the economy improves.

Hey, we do it with toxic waste; why wouldn't it be good enough for the jobless American worker?

I can't imagine any problems with this idea.

Tagged as: globalization

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.