Out of the Blue : * Valley men publish newsletter for ex-IBM employees who have had to let go of a way of life.
Alexander Auerbach describes his new San Fernando Valley-based publication as “a product of Los Angeles traffic congestion.”
There he was on the Ventura Freeway, inching toward home in Sherman Oaks from the West Valley. On “All Things Considered”--National Public Radio’s considerable contribution to American mental health--a reporter was limning the expected impact of additional layoffs by troubled computer giant IBM.
A former reporter who once covered IBM for the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, Auerbach remembers thinking that this was a group of people who would need special help adjusting to life after Big Blue. His idea: a publication for and by ex-IBMers.
“By Van Nuys Boulevard, I had the idea for the newsletter,” said Auerbach, now a public relations consultant. “By Woodman, I had the title--Out of the Blue.”
The monthly newsletter made its debut in March, its appearance delayed a few weeks by the January quake. Auerbach, 50, is publisher. Editor is Rick Weiner, 55, of Northridge, a 26-year veteran of Big Blue who left in 1993 when his job in corporate communications disappeared. The first issue, which featured a story on IBM’s corporate health and an account of how one retiree is adjusting to life on an island off the North Carolina coast, was mailed to 5,000 former employees whose names are in the newsletter’s computerized files.
Already substantial, the potential audience for the newsletter continues to grow. Once the most admired company in the world, IBM employed more than 400,000 conservatively suited men and women in 1986. But since then, the faltering firm has eliminated 150,000 workers through early retirement, buyouts and layoffs. An additional 30,000 jobs will be phased out by the end of 1994.
As Auerbach and Weiner explain, losing their jobs was the last thing that most IBM employees expected. For most of its 70-year history, the company promised anyone who was initiated into its corporate culture a job for life. “IBM prided itself on not laying anybody off,” said Weiner, who notes that this was true even during the Depression. Once a policy at IBM, lifetime employment “became a practice and then it became a tradition,” he said. “Now it’s a memory.”
Many IBM employees were fanatical in their devotion to the company, which has made it that much harder to let go and start over. At one point in its early history, workers attended cohesion-building camps where they sang anthems about founder Thomas Watson.
These days, nobody’s trilling “Thomas Watson is our inspiration / Head and soul of our splendid IBM / We are pledged to him throughout all nations / He’s our president and most beloved man,” as they did in 1933. But, according to Auerbach and Weiner, many former workers have a difficult time breaking the emotional ties that bind them to the company.
One reason, the men say, is that IBM had a unique culture. Big Blue was suffused with pride and professionalism, and people who made the cut knew what to wear (dark suits and white shirts), when and where to move, and even how to make an effective presentation--lots of overhead projections were in order. As a result, IBM lingers in ex-employees’ psyches even after they turn in their keys. “You don’t divorce a mate and just forget about them,” said Weiner. “A lot of people were married to IBM.”
Weiner views himself as one of the lucky ones. In addition to his editing responsibilities, he has an ongoing consulting relationship with a large corporation in the Valley that he declines to name. “I haven’t looked back,” he said. “I’m having fun. I haven’t had problems learning to walk again in the real world.”
Others have been less fortunate. The first issue of Out of the Blue includes mini-profiles of three former employees whose reactions at leaving ranged from anger at the company that rejected them to an optimistic conviction that it was all for the best. It’s clear from talking with many ex-IBMers that reconstructing their lives has been no small task, Auerbach says.
In some cases, entire communities have been transformed, notably the Hudson Valley towns outside New York City where the company had three major facilities. There, the incomes of former IBM families have plummeted and the demand for psychological services has soared. Last year, a Kingston, N. Y., dry cleaner, whose once profitable flood of dark suits and white shirts had slowed to a trickle, torched the family business in the wake of IBM’s decline.
Out of the Blue has no official connection with IBM nor has the company endorsed it. But that doesn’t make the newsletter anti-IBM, its creators say. “We don’t regard this as an outlaw publication or an IBM-bashing publication in any way,” Weiner said. “Our intent is to be beneficial, if not therapeutic,” Auerbach said. Besides, he added, “they’re a lot of really good IBM-bashers out there already.”
IBM was--and still is--a company filled with talent, Auerbach and Weiner point out, and they hope to help the gifted people who once worked there get on with the rest of their lives. A “jobs board” and networking information are regular features of the newsletter. The vigor of the company is also a matter of continuing interest, especially in light of the number of former employees who exercised their option to buy IBM stock.
What happened at IBM wasn’t an isolated event, Auerbach says. It’s happening throughout white-collar America. Even as the economy recovers, there are fewer and fewer white-collar jobs in traditional workplaces. Wherever they once worked, Auerbach says, tomorrow’s most contented workers may be those who create alternative ways to support and sustain themselves, alternatives that allow them to eliminate the long hours and other negative aspects of corporate culture.
“It’s going to be stressful,” Auerbach said. However, he predicts that the future for employees who are cut loose from traditional workplaces could bring enormous rewards, including “the opportunity to lead a different kind of life.”
WHERE GO
What: Out of the Blue, monthly newsletter written for and by former employees of IBM Corp.
Address: P.O. Box 56044, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413.
Subscription: $39.95 a year.
Call: (800) 871-BLUE or -2583.
