IBM closure of its Glasgow office adds to Greenock fears

IBM has closed its Glasgow city centre office in a move that has added to uncertainty surrounding the future of 2,000 employees at the tech giant's Greenock facility, 20 miles away.

The American company is midway through a review of its UK operations. This includes a redundancies consultation programme involving an as yet unspecified number of its Scottish workforce, which totals around 3,000 people.

A senior source close to IBM Scotland said that, following the west of Scotland office closure, he understood staff have been deployed out in the field.

He questioned its timing: "The last thing the Greenock employees need, as they experience this difficult time in their working lives, is to see parts of the business folding around them."

Up until now IBM Scotland has consisted of Greenock, where the company started up almost 60 years ago, backed up by two business "disaster recovery" facilities at Cumbernauld and Livingston, plus offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh office is not considered to be under threat as it is the primary centre for customer sales and marketing in Scotland.

It handles key sectors largely found in the east of Scotland, involving lucrative financial services and public sector contracts including the Scottish Government.

Gary Kildare, a vice-president and senior Scottish executive, in a recently published company brochure said IBM Scotland dealt with "many different segments of IBM's business".

He added: "It delivers IT services to both global organisations and smaller public and private enterprises based within the UK.

"We pride ourselves on being able to offer technology and innovative ideas to a company of any size, whether global or local.

"This demonstrates the depth of skills and capabilities that exist within Scotland today."

Last year Scottish Enterprise announced plans to inject 1million into the Greenock plant to boost research and development and help staff develop cutting-edge software and protect their jobs.

Enterprise minister Jim Mather, himself a former IBM employee, described the move as a lifeline, praising the facility which had showed it could adapt to new challenges.

Up until the turn of the year IBM confined job losses to its United States operations, where 5,000 staff were laid off in 2009, mostly affecting its services division and senior management.

IBM management has refused to comment throughout the redundancies consultation, which ends on 23 May.