IBM kills off Irish server works The Irish Times reports that Big Blue is killing off the remaining server manufacturing jobs in its Emerald Isle factory, and shifting the server-making to its factories in Shenzhen, China. IBM's labor pool in Ireland is now estimated to be somewhere around 4,000 workers. That figure includes the 190 jobs subtracted this week …
Some people in some countries have expressed concern that "made in China" kit is not ideally placed to be trusted for sensitive core infrastructure such as telecoms. This is typically expressed as a reluctance to buy Huawei though I suspect that other apparently Western brands are also quite likely to be built in China or with Chinese-manufactured components.
Do the same considerations apply to IBM-badged kit?
This would lead to CKD* kits of computers to be assembled by low paid workers, in the way a similar requirement for cars in the 50's/early 60's led to CKD exports of Triumph Heralds to Ireland and India to sell at marked up prices.
*Complete Knocked Down (ie: assembled, tested and taken apart again, a flat pack)
Um, no. It would increase the cost while killing innovation as this would create a distorted playing field that would kill smaller companies.
France tried exactly what you're proposing. What it got them was Bull -- systems that were bigger, slower, more expensive, and a generation behind systems built by companies that had to compete on merit in the marketplace. It also shifted the competitive disadvantage and hidden costs onto every French company that used those systems, or interacted with government departments that did.
Britain tried it too, and got ICL. Same story.
Italy tried it and got Olivetti. Same story.
Oh, and Bull, ICL and Olivetti weren't exactly the poster children for "innovation" by "smaller companies". In fact, protecting those dinosaurs actually made it harder for small companies to innovate in Britain, France or Italy.
Perhaps you can give an example of where your brilliant plan has been tried and succeeded in doing anything except raising prices, reducing choice, and lowering quality?
cut its prices (helping small businesses) and increasing their productivity. Or at least try and cut the turn around time on their support tickets.
nah didn't think so...
I guess with the Irish credit crunch all the government subsidies are being cut so time to take all our highly skilled jobs somewhere cheaper...
shame!
What's missing is the number of "temporary" work force will be out of work after this. The 190 jobs going will be the tip of the ice cube, but that's why IBM gets the majority of people building their products from Adecco and Manpower... it shifts the pain of IBM's decisions onto others.
Actually, it has a lot more to do with a currency manipulation that keeps the cost of manufacturing unnaturally low. To my understanding, playing fields are very uneven. On one side, China keeps it's currency devalued making its workforce a lot affordable, while complaining to WTO whenever Western companies impose tariffs on Chinese goods. Free market works only if the playing fields are even. Well, they're not. And it is only to the advantage of multinational corporations which ...actually want China to keep its currency devalued so they can make Chinese factory employees work to death while getting paid peanuts. The same story about India, no difference.
Malaysia and Viet Nam and Cambodia and Thailand, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. When Asia starts to get expensive, then it will shift to Africa while the US and Europe become 3rd world countries. I believe its time for a new economic model and I don't what that looks like, but it must be based on fairness.
Holy crap, the level of discourse on this topic seems to have really plummeted. IBM are leaving because it's cheaper for them to do so. That's the reason the came here (Ireland) in the first place but economic and legal conditions change, it's not as though China has been standing still for the last 10 years so it's not strange that these things happen.
As regards the lefty socialist thinking here, Ireland is fscked because the government put €50bn into the failed banks. Nobody except the banks asked them to do this. The free market way would have been to sell of the assets of the failed banks to the highest bidder with the (meagre) proceeds going to the creditors. The only role for government here is to ensure that things proceed in an orderly fashion with none of the insiders stealing on their way out.
With respect to currency manipulation, that's an expensive game that China is playing. They seem to be prepared to think longer term than western democracies and put down a lot of their hard earned money in order to keep the RMB low. It's worth noting that this doesn't come free and it's also a game that anyone can play. If Ireland wanted to, it could play it too if it were prepared to leave the Euro.
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