IBM UK Ltd’s desperate attemts to avoid using the R-word – the one that equates to the L-word in the US – has had unfortunate repercussions when employees that accepted the option of taking a pay-off rather than retrain for a job they didn’t want turned up to claim their state unemployment pay: according to the Daily Mail, the Department of Employment contacted IBM in Portsmouth about the 2,000 people it has put on the streets and were told that they were on a career transition programme, which meant no dole as far as the Department was concerened; after one of the unfortunates took his case to a social security tribunal, IBM came clean and admitted that career transition was nothing more than a euphemism for voluntary redundancy.
