More on IBM/CTG cuts

IBM has 70 less workers on its campus this week.

The 70 people, who worked in product development, were consultants employed by Buffalo, N.Y.-based CTG. CTG has an office in Rochester at Suite 150 at 3055 41st Street N.W., which opened in November of 2004.

Friday was the last day for the workers in question, said Renae Joyce, CTG’s site manager in Rochester.
The cuts came about “…as a part of streamlining, mainly in the product development area,” says IBM spokesman Jeff Coutuer of Burlington, Vermont. He was filling in this week for Rochester’s spokeswoman Lorie Luedke.

Coutuer said such adjustment are not unusual in the product development area, where staffing needs fluctuate.

“They (needs) go up and down. That is why we have contract or temp employees, to provide flexibility,” he said. “At any given time there are about 1,000 contractors working on IBM’s campus.”

While there are certainly less CTG contract employees on the campus, Joyce of CTG says they still there and they are working in other areas.

CTG still has 259 employees in Rochester and they are “still very active,” she said. When CTG opened, the company said the Rochester office has contracts with Twin Cities-based firms as well as Mayo Clinic, though the bulk are with IBM.

Rochester is one of CTG’s largest offices of the 45 that it has worldwide.

IBM, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in Rochester last month, cut the jobs of 40 of its employees on July 6. They worked assembling the System i and System p computer servers. Re-engineering of the assembly process made it more efficient, which made the positions unnecessary, said IBM spokeswoman Lorie Luedke.

As of Dec. 31, 2005, IBM reported having 4,400 regular employees in Rochester. That is the same number reported at the end of 2004. IBM had 4,500 Rochester staffers in 2003, 4,600 in 2002 and 5,000 in 2001.