More than 1,300 jobs were pencilled for elimination at IBM.

Alliance@IBM, a group working to form a union at the company, reports that 1,135 employees and an unknown number of contractors have been notified their job will be eliminated. The job cuts are at IBM sites in New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Kentucky and home-based employees across the country.

IBM does not generally announce layoffs when they occur but in April chief financial officer Mark Loughridge warned that downsizing would occur this quarter.

"We're putting in place a series of actions to address our U.S. cost base, including a basic focus on resource and cost management disciplines and re-balancing of resources as we execute our global resource strategy," he said, during a conference call to discuss earnings.

IBM had 355,766 employees worldwide at the end of 2006, according to its annual report.

The layoffs follow a Monday announcement of a $2.9m project to hire 500 people for a new customer call center in Daleville, Indiana by 2010. ®

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