International Business Machines Corp., the world's largest computer company, will move the work of as many of 4,730 U.S. software programmers to India, China and elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The unannounced plan, which the newspaper said it viewed in company documents, would replace thousands of workers at IBM facilities in Southbury, Connecticut, Poughkeepsie in New York, Raleigh, North Carolina, Dallas, Boulder in Colorado, and elsewhere in the United States.
The Wall Street Journal said that about 947 people will be notified during the first half of 2004 that their work will be moved overseas. It was not yet clear how many of the other 3,700 jobs identified as "potential to move offshore" in the IBM documents will move next year or later, the paper said.
Armonk, New York-based IBM, which has about 315,000 employees around the world, has been among companies that have moved traditionally higher paid services jobs to low cost centers such as India in recent years. The company has said it will continue to build its services business abroad, because it makes IBM more competitive, saves its customers money and frees up funds for other purposes.
IBM did not immediately return calls for comment on the report.