International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) had not announced the plan, named "Global Sourcing", details of which were contained in company documents, the paper said.

IBM had already hired 500 engineers in India to take on some of the work, it said.

IBM had informed its managers in mid-October of the plan to replace workers at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut; Poughkeepsie, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; and Boulder, Colorado.

The scheme would affect people in its Application Management Services division, part of the global services operations, which employ more than half of IBM's 315,000 staff, the paper said.

In the first stage, about 947 people would be told in the first half of 2004 that their jobs would be handled overseas. Up to another 3,700 jobs would move later but the timing was uncertain, it said.

Some workers would be informed by the end of January, after which they would be expected to train a foreign replacement in the United States for several weeks, the Wall Street Journal said.

Affected workers would have 60 days to find another job within the company, it said.

The plan was reportedly still being developed.

It was unclear whether all of the jobs targetted -- most involving updating and improving software for IBM's own operations -- could be performed overseas.

A spokesman at IBM was not immediately available for comment.

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