IBM Europe hopes over the next three years to reduce its payroll by another 3,000 people by attrition and a strict hiring freeze that will be relaxed only where employment is directly related to expansion in Eastern Europe. The company also intends to follow its US parent in redeploying still more of its 109,000 employees into the field from office jobs – at present 54% of employees are in direct contact with customers, up from 50% in 1988, according to the International Herald Tribune. The company also said that profit margins in Europe were under pressure because of the weak dollar.
