Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701, an IBM employee advocacy group, reports that upward of 800 1,000 workers have been let go this week, with more to follow.

Most of the job cuts appear to be within the U.S., with a high concentration in IBM’s Global Technology Services outsourcing unit.

Alliance@IBM national director Lee Conrad puts the current tally of layoffs at 1,148, and says it’s offshoring that’s driving the reductions. “Those jobs are moving offshore, which seems to be the trend at IBM,” Conrad told AllThingsD. “This is a further abandonment of the U.S. workforce. When IBM talks about rebalancing, what they really mean is moving jobs from the States to overseas.”

IBM did not respond to a request for comment.

And after the deal, then what? Massive layoffs, most likely. Analysts say redundancies between the two companies’ businesses could cause IBM to sack as much as a third of Sun’s employees in one of those “resource actions” it’s so fond of. “This deal is definitely going to lead to a lot of combined layoffs,” Forrester Research analyst James Staten told Forbes. “And it wouldn’t be a surprise if most of that bloodletting happened on the Sun side.”

And after the deal, then what? Massive layoffs, most likely. Analysts say redundancies between the two companies’ businesses could cause IBM to sack as much as a third of Sun’s employees in one of those “resource actions” it’s so fond of. “This deal is definitely going to lead to a lot of combined layoffs,” Forrester Research analyst James Staten told Forbes. “And it wouldn’t be a surprise if most of that bloodletting happened on the Sun side.”