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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.
From the Bloomberg article:
In fact, since 2010 there is no difference in the age of our U.S. workforce, but the skills profile of our employees has changed dramatically.
He said, "U.S. workforce", not "total workforce". How many over-40 Americans have been replaced with younger non-Americans?
Even in Canada.
I have dealings with IBM on equipment from time to time. Back in the last 90s, it would be experienced people in their mid 30s and 40s, sometimes an old experienced greybeard with encyclopedic knowledge was also on the team I dealt with. It gave you the impression they were well versed in what they were selling and supporting.
Gradually they started pushing the older people out of their workforce here, until it's now reached absurd levels. The last 2 times I had IBM SAN people here to discuss storage, they sent 1 manager who I'd hazard a guess to say they couldn't be over 30, and 2-3 techs who looked the same age as our college interns. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that IBM is retaining their institutional knowledge and experience if the shit hits the fan and you need a crack support team to sort out an issue on site.
So, in the grand tradition of class-action lawsuits, the lawyers will make multiple millions of dollars, and the plaintiff class will each get a check for between twenty-one and thirty-one dollars, (depending on the specifics of their case, one dollar for each year terminated before retirement,) and get a coupon good for a full-height, five and a quarter inch floppy drive, (installation extra, cables and mounting screws not included,) or a 10MB Bernoulli Drive diskette, (not the drive itself, but a single item of storage media) from the IBM N.O.S. warehouse.
When they object, IBM will ask, "Oh, what... you don't want these devices, maybe because what... they're OLD? Because they're OBSOLETE? Because they don't do what you'd like them to do, for the resources you want to allot to them? Who's age-discriminating NOW, huh?!?"
Anyone working in or around tech shouldn't be surprised that these days, they have the same philosophy of disposability when it comes to workers, that their customers have, to personal electronics.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Total cost....
1. Older workers have often been with the company for many years, and have higher salaries than freshly hired out of college workers.
2. Having been with the company longer, they usually have more than twice the annual vacation time. They also, often have a significant amount of accrued sick time, which they begin to increasingly use.
3. Health Benefits, younger workers tend to be healthier on average, and typically make use of health services at a less frequent rate, as such, they usually are less particular regarding the quality of health care packages. Their infrequent use often leads them to be unaware that certain health insurance plans require thousands upon thousands out of pocket. "Hey, I have insurance, no I've never used it. But I got it."
So companies like IBM, look at it like this. Worker #1 has been with us 22 years, total cost with benefits is $120,000. A new college grad hire with benefits is $60,000. So we can get two for the price of Worker #1.