IBM moves to ease job fears at Greenock

IBM has moved to allay fears over jobs north of the Border by insisting that its 3,000-strong Scottish workforce is not the main target of its UK redundancy consultation.

Concerns were raised in February when it emerged that the company had embarked on a consultation process. The anxiety was further fuelled last month when it was revealed that IBM had closed its Glasgow city centre office, although the handful of staff who worked there are believed to have been redeployed elsewhere.

IBM's refusal to confirm how many staff were involved in the consultation, which ends on 23 May, has prompted speculation about the future of the plant, where it employs a third of the 6,000 staff it employed at its height. Until this year, most of the tech giant's job losses were confined to the US, where 5,000 were shed last year.

In an interview with Scotland on Sunday, Gary Kildare, a global vice-president for human resources at IBM, insisted that IBM Scotland is not the specific target of the job cuts. He said the firm remains committed to its operations north of the Border and will next year celebrate 60 years in Scotland.

"We are not targeting our Scottish workforce," Kildare said. "It's not a Scottish consultation, it's a UK-wide consultation. The transformation in the UK… is mirroring the transformation which is happening with IBM globally.

"We started on the transformation path a couple of years ago. Change is a way of life for IBM."

Kildare refused to say how many jobs are likely to be affected, saying: "We are already going through a consultation in the UK and I am not in a position to comment further on that now. What I can say is there is no focus or action that is being focused on our Scottish workforce."

Sources close to IBM say the redundancy consultation involves just one specific strand of the firm's operations in the UK. It is also believed that neither of the businesses at its Greenock plant, which last year benefited from a 1 million Scottish Enterprise grant, are involved.

Last year, enterprise minister Jim Mather revealed that the agency was ploughing 1m into IBM's "integrated supply chain" and software businesses at Greenock to boost research and development and protect jobs. Mather, a former IBM employee, described the grant as the time as a lifeline.

In 2005, IBM stopped manufacturing computers in Scotland and has restructured to provide IT and technology services.