Gov. Peter Shumlin has challenged IBM to disclose the number of workers recently laid off from the company’s computer chip manufacturing plant in Essex Junction.
Speaking at a press conference Thursday unrelated to IBM, Shumlin directed his remarks to the information technology giant’s corporate leaders.
“You’re very important to the state of Vermont, but I wish you would just peel the Band-Aid off and give us the numbers,” Shumlin said.
The state actually has the numbers, plus a detailed list of every individual let go with the recent layoffs, announced June 12.
Whether state officials can disclose the total is the crux of the latest wrestling match over transparency and confidentiality — a struggle that’s heated up now that the layoffs are official.
“It’s not a big secret that IBM has laid off a lot of people,” Shumlin said.
Yet the company, which grew more secretive about its employment profile in 2010, has asserted that the total layoff tally is exempt from Vermont’s Public Records Act.
Estimates based on attendance at the state’s Rapid Response sessions for newly unemployed workers surpass 300. In the state’s petition for the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate the role foreign trade may have played in the layoff, as many as 500 unemployed are projected.
Dept. of Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan agrees that information that may be used to identify specific individuals who were laid off is exempt from public disclosure. She was unconvinced by the company’s interpretation of state laws regarding trade secrets, however. The simply tally of laid off workers should be known, she said.
Noonan gave IBM until noon on Thursday to make its case for withholding the layoff number.
Shumlin declined to speculate specific actions the state or IBM may take from here. He did acknowledge, however, that if the state believes that the Public Records Act does not exempt disclosure of the layoff number, then officials would be bound to publicly release the information.