Lenovo's acquisition triggered a shock and the IBM Shenzhen factory was shut down

Lenovo's acquisition caused a shock and the IBM Shenzhen factory was shut down. Yesterday, No. 30 Taohua Road, Futian Free Trade Port Area, Shenzhen, IBM (186.39, -1.29…

This is the eighth day that IBM Shenzhen factory employees have expressed their demands in this way. IBM STC terminated the labor contracts of 20 employees without providing any financial compensation, and ordered them to immediately go through the resignation and handover procedures and leave the company. Employee ID numbers and company decisions are repeatedly broadcast over company radio.

An employee who participated in the work stoppage told a reporter from China Business News that on March 3, the company suddenly announced to employees that Lenovo had acquired the IBM X86 business, of which STC was a part. The employees could not accept the compensation conditions unilaterally proposed by the company and spontaneously organized a work stoppage.

Duan Yi, director of Guangdong Laowei Law Firm, told reporters that work stoppages have occurred due to inability to reach an agreement with employees on compensation due to mergers and acquisitions. At the end of last year, workers at the Nokia (7.92, -0.03, -0.38%) Dongguan factory went on strike to protest and were acquired by Microsoft (37.82, -0.08, -0.21%). In 2012, Google (1211.57, -3.22, -0.27%) After the acquisition of Motorola, some engineers at Motorola's Nanjing factory also chose to stop work to express their dissatisfaction.

Substantive "negotiations" have not been carried out

A "First Financial Daily" reporter saw the dismissal notice and said that the company requires all employees who have stopped working or are absent from work to resume normal work immediately. In the future, if the company finds any employee who continues to seriously violate labor discipline or rules and regulations, the company will also fire them in accordance with the law.

To express their dissatisfaction with the company's decision, more than 900 employees who participated in the work stoppage began to gather in the square.

This is due to the sale of IBM's X86 business. On January 30, IBM announced that it would sell its X86 server business to Lenovo Group for US$2.3 billion. In this business sale transaction, approximately 7,500 IBM employees are expected to obtain new jobs in Lenovo Group. IBM STC is part of Lenovo's acquisition of the X86 business, involving more than 1,000 employees on the production line.

” We expect that later this year, the previously announced IBM The sale of the X86 server business to Lenovo will be approved. Therefore, IBM's manufacturing company in Shenzhen will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lenovo. Existing employees related to the X86 business in the Shenzhen manufacturing company can make their own choices: either stay in the manufacturing company, and the relevant benefits will remain unchanged; or they can voluntarily choose reasonable and appropriate severance compensation and resign from the manufacturing company. Although this choice depends entirely on the individual employees, we hope that employees can choose to stay in the manufacturing company in Shenzhen." IBM responded to this reporter.

Employees participating in the work stoppage told reporters that for those who continue to retain their working years, after Legend Holdings STC, their working years will be recognized and used to calculate all welfare projects during their future working period at Lenovo, but they will not receive compensation, and the overall salary level will remain unchanged. If you pay off your working years and work at Lenovo, you will receive N+1 compensation. Employees who choose to resign voluntarily will receive a special bonus of N+1 plus 6,000 yuan. N refers to the number of years the employee has worked at IBM.

The above-mentioned employees told reporters that the company only told them that Lenovo would control IBM's X86 business, but did not explain to employees how much it would hold. If it is a package transfer, the compensation will also be different. Compensation for liquidation of seniority cannot be achieved until Legend Holdings. They are not optimistic about the prospects and no one makes the choice to liquidate seniority.

"We must sign before March 7th. If we don't sign, we will default to Lenovo, or if we apply for resignation again, it will be deemed as automatic resignation." said the above-mentioned employee. Although the STC requires negotiations with worker representatives, most workers are worried that the worker representatives will be "incited" by the company, so they require that all negotiations must be conducted in the presence of everyone, so that current negotiations cannot be carried out.

Spin off part of the hardware department

Starting last year, IBM is reducing its dependence on the hardware business.

Some brokerages stated in a research report that some of IBM's hardware businesses performed poorly, such as high-end Unix and storage products. With the exception of its mainframe computer business, hardware has not been central to IBM's growth.

IBM's full-year revenue in fiscal year 2013 was US$99.751 billion, down 5% from the previous fiscal year; net profit was US$16.483 billion, down 0.7% from the previous fiscal year. Among them, there was a serious decline in the systems and technology group department, with a decline of as much as 18%. In the current market, although selling servers is still a profitable business, it is more reflected in product innovation. Recognizing this, IBM is determined to give up its shrinking and stagnant market share, and this approach is also in line with IBM's strategy of pursuing high profits in the future.

Li Ye (pseudonym), an internal IBM employee, told reporters that selling the low-end server business is in line with IBM's current choice of a business model with high profits and more room for growth.

"The current Resources actions (resource optimization) are actually layoffs and adjustments. The most affected is the United States, followed by India, and the most affected in China is the X86 server group. The main reason is that the profits are not high." Li Ye told reporters that the company's goal is to maintain the shares and achieve a dividend of US$10 per share in 2015. When making internal adjustments, it will focus on the profit contribution rate of each group.

Li Ye told reporters that for China, the layoffs are mainly low-end server-related positions, which will not have a great impact on the business of most core departments, but the psychology of employees will be affected to some extent.

IBM has confirmed that it will lay off some employees in order to focus more on new priority areas, such as cloud services, analytics and "cognitive computing", which means that the company must take layoff measures in some departments.

Where will the employees of STC Company go during this shutdown? Duan Yi told reporters that China does not have clear legislative provisions that prohibit employers from exercising the right to dismiss alone. According to the Labor Contract Law, if a worker fails to report to work as required, the employer can terminate the labor contract. However, according to the "Trade Union Law", in the case of collective work stoppage, the trade union should come out to mediate and work with relevant departments to effectively resolve the issues of workers' interests. This does not mean that the boss has sufficient power to fire workers.