Age Discrimination, Indian-Style

theodp writes "In April, IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano told investors Big Blue hopes to dodge an estimated $6 billion in liability stemming from a judge's ruling that IBM violated U.S. federal age discrimination laws. In May, IBM closes on its $150-$200MM purchase of Indian outsourcer Daksh, whose age requirements for job applicants make Logan's Run seem progressive. On its Opportunities page, Daksh states that Customer Care Specialists should be between 21-25 years of age and Team Leaders should be no older than 27. Early Daksh investors included Citigroup and we-don't-need-no-stinking-unions Amazon."

Comments

That's what is wonderful about outsourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's not legal in one country, just outsource to another where it is legal.

Let's make one thing crystal clear

[Henrik S. Hansen]

Let's make one thing crystal clear:

The only reasons companies discriminate based on age is that younger people are easier to persuade to work harder, longer hours, and that they usually doesn't require as high pay as older, more experienced applicants.

It is NOT because younger people are smarter or brighter than older people. And who says they are, anyway? IMO, any supposed loss in thinking quickly is easily made up by the experience and better problem solving skills of older people.

Re:Let's make one thing crystal clear

[Roland Piquepaille]

younger people are easier to persuade to work harder, longer hours, and that they usually doesn't require as high pay as older, more experienced applicants.

It is NOT because younger people are smarter or brighter than older people

Younger people are not bright when it comes to refusing to work overtime so much that it destroys health and family life.

I know that often they can't refuse to work hard, because jobs are hard to come by these days and some other youngster is ready to take the place, but also it's usually illegal to fire someone for refusing gross overtime. The only trouble for young people is how do you prove you were fired by your boss on that ground in court.

Re:Let's make one thing crystal clear

[Fulcrum of Evil]

With regard to maternity leave, it is basically paid vacation. Vacation is expensive for an employeer. From the employees side, it is a great help in the balance between work and family.

More like recovery from surgery. The fact is that we, in this society, recognize that people need to have kids in order to continue the species, and that it's a good idea to support this. The only reason it's even an issue is that the dominant sex in business suffers minimal impact when they get someone pregnant.

Some people would say my employeer should be required to take me back, I don't. Perhaps its cause I'm young, single, and stupid. I would like to think otherwise.

More like young and naive. If you gave notice, who'd pay the dentist - oh wait, dentists aren't usually covered anyway. It sounds like you've never had to deal with being out of work for a long period, or pay for medical care in said jobless period.

Re:Let's make one thing crystal clear

[Fjandr]

The point is that it isn't a vacation.

Speaking from an employer point-of-view, it is basically paid vacation, whether you wish to acknowledge that or not. A paid vacation is where an employer pays an employee when they don't show up to do work. During paid maternity leave, and employer is paying someone who is not going to show up to work. They are, in fact, the same from a financial standpoint. They are also the same from a sociological standpoint: a reward of payment for services NOT rendered as an act of good will. That is all: an act of good will. It's an act of good will that has a real, definite cost. Someone will bear that cost, period. More on that further below...

j-pimp never said that (s)he didn't support pregnant women. From a personal standpoint, it sounds like much the opposite. What it DOES sound like, however, is that from a political standpoint the parent does not support forcing businesses to pay for something that will end up increasing costs for everyone involved.

Much like other costs of doing business, these don't typically hurt businesses all that much. They can (and do) pass the costs on to their customers and their employees. Customers in the form of higher costs for service, and employees through lower pay packages, slower promotion routes, and hard-nosed insurance administrators who discourage a higher percentage of insured from pursuing reimbursement.

In the end, it's quite true that these things have a way of coming back around to bite people in the ass. Those people certainly won't be the businesses involved. While certain people are definitely helped by these regulations where they otherwise likely wouldn't have been, there are also people hurt by these regulations who otherwise likely wouldn't have been. The latter case just isn't done directly, so fewer people bitch about it. The fact that it's not talked about often doesn't mean it's a non-issue though.

Personally, I don't find the post that started this all (the one that prompted the comment about needing his dick cut off due to some perceived irresponsibility assumed to be inherent from his own comment) to be very insulting. It really was matter-of-fact, and quite true. People who want certain benefits should realize that someone (most likely them) will have to give something up in return for those benefits. They're not free, so people shouldn't expect them to be. Those who are lucky enough to work for one of those rare companies that are run by people who care are the exception. It wasn't a case of telling people that they should sit down, shut up, and not ask for benefits. It was a simple case of telling people to wake up, open their eyes, and realize that there are consequences (good, bad, and neutral) to every action. One of the consequences to demanding health care of any kind (not just maternity care) is that it costs money, and few people are going to volunteer to pay it for you. In the business world, you can't keep from having the cost passed on. It's simply not possible. It will occur one way or the other. The original poster was simply stating that those looking for that type of health care (I would extend that to any benefit, period) should be aware that it WILL cost them, one way or the other, short term or long term. Just simple economics, nothing more. Sad that people had to get bent out of shape about it.

Is this a problem?

[Serveert]

This is why we outsource to India. Less government regulation, fewer worker protection laws, fewer environmental regulations... I mean, are we to enforce our minimum wage laws on India? No.

Re:Is this a problem?

[Serveert]

Should Europeans who outsourced to America tax American products given that Americans don't require workers to be near a window, don't require workers to have 5 weeks of vacation and can be fired with ease?

Things are tricky. I lost my job to Indians but managed to find something more stable and well paying since I do have a good degree, do have plenty of experience, I am relatively young. But what happens when I get older.

Things are bleak and cold and confusing, the only thing that is sure is people will not think twice about letting you go if that means they can keep their job or make a quick buck.

Re:Is this a problem?

[GileadGreene]

...this is overwelmingly because the standard of living is lower in their country

It's not so much the standard of living as the cost of living. For example, the film industry has started doing lots of low-cost production in Australia and New Zealand. Now, the standard of living in those countries is comparable to (and arguably better than) the standard of living in the US. But the cost of living is much lower, so the labor is cheaper. From what I understand of the situation in India the standard of living for Indian tech workers is simialr to that of their American counterparts, but again, their cost of living is much lower.

Re:Is this a problem?

[Copid]

Here's what follows from that: Your goods are no more competitive than they were when you weren't circumventing US employment law. You're making no more money than you did when you weren't circumventing US employment law. Thus, the incentive to circumvent US employment law goes away. The customers are either going to pay for additional taxes or additional worker benefits. If the taxes are imposed at the right rates, there should be no difference.

Re:Is this a problem?

[Marvin_OScribbley]

And who will pay for those additional taxes? That's right, the customers will.

As they should.

Nothing new here

[cpu_fusion]

If you consider the working/living conditions in mainland China, home of countless "outsourced" wage-slaves for western industry, age-discrimination seems downright harmless.

This is gonna get worse.

[Orclover]

Im 32 years old (in a couple days), thankfully i run a small buisness network of 60 systems spread out across a city. But if my job ever went south again i always thought i could fall back into computer/networking phone support once again. But unlike 10 years ago it seems there are little oportunities for someone my age to work in such a field, first because most of those jobs got shipped off to malaysia and india (fuck you dell), and now because im over the hill. Seems to be yet another reason to hang onto my current job with a iron griop.

Nice theory, but...

[corporatemutantninja]

...there's a simple reason call centers want young people: they have to retrain them to use American accents (actually, they teach a neutral accent they call "Global English") and older learners have a harder time changing their accents. Old dog/new tricks and all. Judging by the posters selection of links, I'd say he is grasping for ways to bad-mouth the Indians in order to keep the jobs here.

Re:Nice theory, but...

[StrawberryFrog]

they teach a neutral accent

There's no such thing. It is imposible to speak English (or any other language for that matter) without pronouncing your words in a particualr way. That is a way of speaking, an accent. Travel a bit, and you'll realise that "unaccented speach" is really just "the way people talk where I grew up".

This is bad even for /.

[sultanoslack]

Wow, this should get a gold metal for such a high number of mostly unrelated information given in a single article summary.

The age discrimination IBM was hit with was related to pensioners having their benefits plan changed; it had nothing to do with hiring.

The stuff on the Indian side of things, well, isn't really all that strange. The same thing happens informally in the US and in fact even the government has minimum ages for many elected representatives.

But of course this will just turn into another "Oh, woe is me, I can't believe that skilled people in other countries are getting jobs too." (Nevermind that it's still much harder for an Indian with strong tech skills to find a job than an American.)

Time to UNIONIZE

[Anonymous Coward]

This is outrageous, yes, but was it really unexpected? With all these companies outsourcing American IT jobs to the Far East, there is only one soultion, one that will keep American corporations from exploiting their workers, both at home and abroad: unionization.

I've heard a lot of arguments against this in my time (many of them on Slashdot), and most of them boiled down to this: IT workers, as professionals, shouldn't unionize. Unions are for blue-collar workers. While I suppose this is a nice way to think about your job and make you feel better about paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for a degree in Information Studies, it's ignoring reality. Perhaps the best way I've seen someone put it is, in reply to someone complaining about needing a buzzword-compliant resume, that such requirements should be a clue that IT workers are now a commodity. Like it or not, IT is the new factory worker of the 21st century, and if IT workers don't wake up and unionize, they'll get screwed so fast their heads will spin.

Maybe the AFL-CIO or UAW would be up to the task? They're only a postage stamp or a phone call away.

Slightly off topic.... but along the same lines..

[tonywestonuk]

The best age group for IT related tasks will, at the moment be between around 28 to 35..... Why?

Well, people in this group grew up with the likes of the VIC 20, the ZX81, The Oric, The 80's 8 bit computers that we learnt and understood like riding a bike. No qualification, or degree will ever match what we know, and understand. Where students now learn computing in Uni, or secondary school, get taught IT skills, we learnt it through love of it, at 10 years of age, or earlier.
We are the David Beckhams of the industry, The Tiger Woods. Understand that in this era, we are kings, and our ability will never be surpassed by anyone just getting a degree, however young. I am 31, and the my best work (so far) has been in the last year or so. In my workplace, we have had people younger, but, though they can code well, they seam to just miss the point... They just analyze any problem, and apply it to what they've learnt at school or uni, they do not truly understand that problem, or how to realize the best solution.... and there solution is, well, ok, but never shows any innovation or 'Wow factor'

.... Tony.

Re:reverse age discrimination

[Arcanix]

Yes, this all sounds great but personally I would prefer not to have a bunch of kids who have no clue about the real world and no concept of responsibility be selecting who will run this country.

The problem with 14-17 year olds is not in their lack of intelligence, but in their lack of common sense. I think the main issue is that the majority of kids do not support themselves and until they do the really shouldn't have much of a say in how things should go.

I suppose I could possibly support a measure for them voting if they were not claimed as a dependent on anyone's tax return.

Unions are dead

[Grieveq]

There is plenty of fodder in the above comments that could be remarked upon. (Bashing of US companies outsourcing jobs to India) But I think the current state of the economy shows that in the long run, the outsourcing of low wage/skill jobs to India and China is a good thing.

"we-don't-need-no-stinking-unions Amazon."

Unions are dead. Japanese car makers, Walmart, and many other business have show us this time and time again. Unions kill creativity, bring little benefit to workers anymore, and will only stagnate the company's growth.

Trust free markets

[argoff]

If a company doens't hire someone because they're too old, then let them suffer the natural consequences of not getting the most effective people for the job. If a company hires a young person because they can pay them cheap and exploit them - make your own company, hire tham away, pay them more and pick the cream of the crop at will.

Of course, sometimes companies take advantage of the system to expolit people, like communisim. Other times they take advantage of phoney property rights like copyright and patnet monopolies, other times they take advantage of false barriers to entry - like excessive regulation of the railroad industry, or RF frequencies. Not to mention our centralized monitary/tax system routinely rips people off, and locks people into the system when it comes to credit or money. - But from my experience, these problems have more to do with the publics poor belief systems than free markets.

Moral: societies that have more libertarian values have more economic prosperity for the little guy.

Feminist would freak

[JGski]

What's allowed in most developing countries would make your head spin.

In the Philippines, it is customary to include on your resume: age, religion, marital status, weight, height, a recent photograph, and if female, "measurements". If you don't, you probably won't be considered. The age of being "past your prime" is about age 25, professionally and maritally. You can be summarily rejected for employment for any of the above parameter values - being muslim as always been a strike against in the Catholic Philippines. Not being of the right sex or not being "pretty enough" to "decorate" the office is pretty common.

I'm sure other countries are similar. USian companies are required to follow the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; I wonder if it could apply to foreign age discrimination of subcontractors and subsidiaries?

Re:Feminist would freak

[Brandybuck]

Probably why the Phillipines are not an economic powerhouse... "I see you're a Rhodes scholar and MacArthur Grant Recipient, Miss Domingo. However you only wear a B-cup, so we cannot hire you at this time."

I can understand (but not necessarily agree) wanting a young pretty woman for your receptionist, but it's economically stupid to demand them everywhere else.

Re:Ah, the Imperial US raises its head again.

[Pituritus Ani]

As a country, this isn't an imposition of one country's labor laws on another--it's just an adjustment of tax codes to discourage commerce with countries who choose not to have standards equivalent to those of the importing country. Should that be a problem, the government of the exporting country has two choices: bring its labor standards up to facilitate commerce, or remain uncompetitive if it can't compete on a level playing field. This isn't coercion--there's no military force at work here.

You sir, are a fool.

[Elpacoloco]

You say that regulations "Drive businesses away," however, who said that nations need companies?

A company is just a group of people who are trying to make the most amount of money possible. Regulations merely say "This is what it takes to earn money legally in this country."

Therefore, for maximum profits, a company would need to function in the maxiumum number of countries, while following their regulations, and keeping production in the cheapest possible country.

The nation does not owe the corporations that dwell within a profit.

Re:Fuck you, racist.

[WCMI92]

"Somebody with the class and educational background to get this sort of job in India speaks English well enough. Your problem is not that the foreign workers speak bad English, but rather that you're intolerant of anybody who speaks it with a foreign accent, and undisposed to listen to them in the first place. (Of course you're not going to understand what somebody says if you don't listen to them.)"

Foreign accents, I don't mind. I work with Iranians at my workplace.

But I can't understand half the words Indians use. Which makes it TWICE as hard when you are trying to fix a server.

If Microsoft, Cisco, etc are going to charge me an arm and a leg per incident, they should provide someone who speaks English I can understand.

It's not racist, it's a fact. If I can't understand you, you are no use to me.