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IBM is Being Sued For Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands (bloomberg.com)
A lawyer known for battling tech giants over the treatment of workers has set her sights on International Business Machines Corp. Bloomberg reports: Shannon Liss-Riordan on Monday filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of three former IBM employees who say the tech giant discriminated against them based on their age when it fired them. Liss-Riordan, a partner at Lichten & Liss-Riordan in Boston, has represented workers against Amazon, Uber and Google and has styled her firm as the premier champion for employees left behind by powerful tech companies. "Over the last several years, IBM has been in the process of systematically laying off older employees in order to build a younger workforce," the former employees claim in the suit, which draws heavily on a ProPublica report published in March that said the company has fired more than 20,000 employees older than 40 in the last six years.
The lawsuit comes as IBM faces questions about its firing practices. In exhaustive detail, the ProPublica report made the case that IBM systematically broke age-discrimination rules. Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has consolidated complaints against IBM into a single, targeted investigation, according to a person familiar with it. Further reading: IBM Fired Me Because I'm Not a Millennial, Alleges Axed Cloud Sales Star in Age Discrim Court Row, and IBM is Telling Remote Workers To Get Back in the Office Or Leave.
The lawsuit comes as IBM faces questions about its firing practices. In exhaustive detail, the ProPublica report made the case that IBM systematically broke age-discrimination rules. Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has consolidated complaints against IBM into a single, targeted investigation, according to a person familiar with it. Further reading: IBM Fired Me Because I'm Not a Millennial, Alleges Axed Cloud Sales Star in Age Discrim Court Row, and IBM is Telling Remote Workers To Get Back in the Office Or Leave.
This has been an open secret for years. They want to reduce their higher paid headcount by 100, so they lay off 1000, but they give the employees time to apply for other internal jobs. But make sure that all of the open positions the laid off staff are eligible for pay less then the salaries of the employees you want to get rid of, and higher 900 back in different rolls. This same scheme works to get rid of people getting close to retirement as well, at least it did back when IBM employees still had pensions.
They get caught doing this every 10 years or so.
Happened to a family member that worked for IBM in the 90s. They laid off everyone over ~50 without allowing them to look for new positions internally. Anyone under 50 but over 45 was supposed to be allowed two weeks to search the internal job postings and apply before being let go. Incidentally the location manager where my family member was went on vacation for two weeks without giving anyone access to the job board. When the manager came back, everyone only had a day or two left before being forced out.
To make it more insulting, they were all told their positions were no longer needed and they were being downsized. But a hiring manager didn't secure their LotusNotes calendar and people being forced out were able to see interviews scheduled for new younger people for basically their jobs (same description but different title).
It took 10 years for that class action suit over ageism to finally get settled. In the early to mid 2000s there was another story about IBM pulling the ageism bit again.
And now again... Definitely not a company that is loyal to its people...