Offshoring foes protest at IBM annual meeting - Computerworld

Offshoring foes protest at IBM annual meeting - Computerworld "Sporadic chants of "Offshore the CEO!" punctuated a gray morning here in Providence, R.I., as about two dozen picketers representing a group of current and former IBM employees welcomed attendees to the company's annual meeting."

Meanwhile, in today's WSJ:
"In an apparent response to criticism by retirees and former employees whose jobs have been outsourced, Mr. Palmisano said that IBM "overinvests" in employees through spending $750 million a year on training programs, which he said is more than all competitors combined spend. He also said that "we were the only company in our industry that continued to increase pay and bonuses," during the industry downturn of the past two years.
Later, when a shareholder complained about IBM's cutbacks in retiree medical pay, Mr. Palmisano replied that only 35% of IBM's high-tech competitors pay any such benefits. He said, "There's a crisis in the health-care system in the U.S." that the government needs to solve."

There was a fairly lame episode of "The West Wing" last week in which a company called "JCN" (i.e., IBM + 1; "HAL" was already taken...) was the controversy of the week. I guess the world is 100% "reality TV" these days...