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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.
They didn't have the skills!
That's how you get around EEOC and ADA laws: just say, "they don't have the skills!"
Then send the jobs overseas.
And when you spend years being a a good IBM employee, well; those skills don't transfer - or so I'm told by recruiters and hiring managers.
Yeah, sure, its all the same tech, nothing is new, just reengineered in new clothing.
And you young coders are the reason for bloat, cant make your own code so import a 200 meg framework.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Surely IBM has more than three employees over 40?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
- Yeah. We're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore(*), that's the usual deal.
- Standard operating procedure
(*) I guess that should read India these days...
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I am waiting for the class action against tech giants for firing US citizens in favor of H1-B workers.
The industry is rife with it, but not one politician has the courage to address this.
Asking for a friend.
sue over h1b's as well you can't fire usc & h1b's
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?
I ... Do you ...
HOW do you concile 'wants to mooch off younger generation' with 'wants to keep their jobs'?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Are you really so stupid and ignorant to believe that ALL members of the older generations have the wherewithal and desire to do as you claim? Can't you really understand that the vast majority of people in those generations are as much at the mercy of the powers-that-be as you, me or almost anybody else? Are you going to start using your brain, so you can stop uttering nonsense?
This IBM move shows why as you get older, it's not a good idea to just sit and while away the hours at a large company.
Anything can and will happen, including sadly layoffs...
If you move around from company to company every so often, you keep your skills much more current, and at the same time expand a network of contacts you might be able to find other jobs through.
The more current skills combined with experience can also be used to maintain higher salary levels if you work at it and negotiate some.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Moving around is one way to be introduced to different skills (though not excel in any). You get also get security in your career by just doing some planning an which company or companies you'd like to move to, without actually making the move until it's necessary. I don't want to to to re-type everything I typed out yesterday, so here are more details on what I do in order to always have a "better" job kinda lined lined up:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Increasingly Bring in Millenials
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
... as we know it. This is a cold hard fact. Robots are taking over and anything IT is going to be a consulting and/or gig affair running of the cloud provided by that silly stupid team of crazies building a search engine when search was done and over with or that other wacko running an internet bookstore even though everybody knows that books are the one thing you want to by in a nice brick and mortar store.
The direction the world is headed won't pass IBM or any other behemoth of yesteryear by, including Oracle, Microsoft and the lot. That IBM is decommsioning their high-pay workforce down to a new minimum shouldn't surprise anybody.
Age discrimination? Yeah, sure. That exsists but it works both ways.
Get a suit and tie and a decent haircut and a neat website and some custom stationary and cash in on your grey hair with consulting is what I would recommend.
I'm heading in that direction myself.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I left IBM when they started the co-location nonsense.
How can you target a layoff to folks over 35 without saying it outright? Tell most of your employees they have to relocate to a city of IBM's choosing. And you have to do it within 90 days. And even if you relocate, you'll have no more job security than you had before.
Result: IBM have preferentially "laid off" the older employees who are more likely to have community and family that they don't want to disrupt. Fresh graduates with no kids in school or elderly parents to look after will be more likely to pack up and go where they're told. All the while IBM says it's to improve collaboration and not their fault if not everyone wants to play along.
I'm sure someone got a huge bonus when they presented that scheme to management.
I've personally seen H1-B abuse at multiple companies myself. The current administration claimed they were going to cut back on "body shops" and make sure the approvals were going to legitimate requests rather than just attempts to get cheap docile labor. It's still too early to say how it's working out. (By "docile" I mean via situation, not culture.)
Table-ized A.I.
Big companies used to pay more for general IT experience. This practice is dwindling as hiring is focusing more on specific tool-sets and ignoring anything outside the target tool-set.
A general-IT-experience "bonus" is dying. If they want "5 years of Java", they pretty much ONLY want 5 years of Java. If you even make the impression you expect your other experience to get you more pay, you are probably out the interview door.
I won't make a judgement call on this practice here, for it's a long topic. I'm only saying it's the trending practice. Everything is getting "gig-ier" and company doors revolve faster.
Thus, it seems IBM hired under Practice X, but fired under Practice Y, making the firings lopsided by age.
Table-ized A.I.
"I" stands for Infernal.
Moving around is one way to be introduced to different skills (though not excel in any)
That's a choice you can make though. You can always choose to build on skills you have, vs. just learning new things all the time and not having much depth...
It is better to have some depth in at least one area, even depth in any given area requires the evolution of skill to match the change in technology. Back when I focused on Java work I spent a lot of time following the evolution of Java and the changing of best practices.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the younger generation are so shit hot, they don't need social programs, do they? Or maybe they just have new and different issues to us GenX+ types.. and by the way, none of us older people purposefully fucked things up, we're as guilty of being lied to as everyone else.
I was earning £70k a year at 37 (not great, but definitely not bad. I was more than comfortable). They couldn't wait to can my arse over someone who would suck more dick and stand up for themselves less.
You can build on your knowledge that one main thing you focus on - a SQL server admin at one company can be a SQL server admin at the next company. A lot of the other stuff is different between companies. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
That is, unless perhaps you are VERY strategic in your company, working on getting assigned to another team that works on something that the other company uses.
I used to work for IBM. They can’t win. They are a dinosaur, as far as technology goes. Their workforce is old and stale. They’re losing revenue, they have to cut staff. Most of their staff is old, and irrelevant. So they cut them, and face an age discrimination suit. In twenty years IBM will be gone. Go ahead, fight over the scraps...
Your post is true but it's not like you can consider any RTOS programmers to ever "veg out", the kind of stuff you are describing is a lot more rigorous and you can't stay employed while being mediocre, the way you can with other enterprise programming.
Finding a technical niche is a powerful technique as long as you are not doing too deep down a very limited specialization.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
but you're giving up any semblance of stability. Now, if you're in the top 20% skill wise maybe not, but statistically if you're reading this you're not, because that's only 20% of the population.
Also, it assumes you can just keep moving to jobs that are good for your skill set. But what if you're hired for one thing and end up doing something else? You can leave, but if you job hop too much it starts to look like you can't hold down a job.
Also, not having to spend all your free time getting ready for your next job would be kind of nice. I don't really think we, as a species, should have to live like sharks desperately swimming to keep water flowing over our gills to breath.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is why half of America doesn't give a shit if Trump crashes Wall Street. Main Street stopped relying on Wall Street ages ago.
but you're giving up any semblance of stability.
How much "stability" did all of the employees that IBM is letting go have?
That's my point, at large companies stability is illusory, so you better not be in a position where it's a problem if you are suddenly gone - moving around from time to time is a way to ensure you are more ready for change naturally.
At smaller companies I think you can have a better feel for problems coming down the pike. But at the large companies I worked for there were whole departments vaporized in an instant with no clue it was coming.
But what if you're hired for one thing and end up doing something else? You can leave, but if you job hop too much it starts to look like you can't hold down a job.
That's a valid point but leaving every three years or so doesn't look like job hopping, not any more... if you are careful it will be more rare that you are hired on to one thing and then moved to something else you don't want to do.
Also, not having to spend all your free time getting ready for your next job would be kind of nice.
Three years or so I think allows for a lot of breathing room. Maybe a bit longer, but you run the risk I feel of getting complacent and making it harder to take action, plus as I said companies are not stable anyway so the longer you stay the more likely it is someone else is choosing when you leave rather than yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
IBM
UBM
We all BM
for IBM
Laid off in 2002 (age 50) after they bought the company that bought the company for which I went to work. Took them a year to figure out that I was of no interest to them since they were mothballing the product on which I was the LEVEL NINE "Extensibility Architect" employee. I still don't know how they figured out I hated everything about them....
When a large company does this, it's time to sell their stock...
This is the sign that the company changed from trying to deliver the best service possible to trying to make money in the short term. While it works for a short time, the inherent trade-offs that this entails for a business means that it will have piss-poor performance in the long term.
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.
I don't know the number of times I have tried to point this out to people here and elsewhere: that capitalism, US style, is bad for you. Capitalism, up to a point, definitely has its good sides, but this is simply wholesale rape of workers, and it is not just IBM - all large corporations do this, callously and with no regard for their workers. There may be the odd one out, that is better, there aren't many, and apparently none in the US.
I don't care whether you can stomach the word "communist" or "socialist" - call it something else, if you want - but we, as workers, have to stand together against this, sooner or later. And we are workers, whether we are called SW engineers or any other pretentious title: if you are employed for a salary, you are a worker: working class, if you will. Or if you don't like that term either, then "lower class". If you and your family depend for their daily lives on you being able to produce an income, then you are lower class - otherwise you are upper class. Haven't you noticed how this upper class somehow always gets to line their pockets? If the economy goes well, they get richer, and if everything crashes and burns, they still get richer; but the rest of us get the raw deal in any situation.
And to those who are too young to have learned: remember that your turn will come too. When you are too old for the liking of your employer, you will be kicked out - you will still be lower class, and you will be discarded with never a thought. Unless, that is, we get together and make things change; that is supposed to be the great benefit of freedom and democracy: that we can get together and change things.
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.
This has been a problem for at least 20 years. My own experience has been that after age 45 I couldn't get interviews for jobs I could do in my sleep. At 66 I haven't had a job in high tech for ten years. I'd point to a lot of high tech firms but I'd like to single out IBM for being the worst of the worst. Not only do they practice active ageism and H1B preferences but they are the absolute worst corporate neighbor. I live in a town with a 400,000 sq ft IBM facility. To get in they squeezed the town on taxes, contribute almost nothing to the local economy, contribute nothing to the schools or community around them and even refuse to allow such things as a Sunday Farmers market on their 300-acre parking lot that's mostly empty even on weekdays. If they went out of business and the building returned to an active farm it would contribute more to the town.
Tax IBM Revenue, not Profit
Casteism
The US isn't the public domain. It's a sovereign nation. As voting American and an ex IBM employee (5 years. Left on my own steam), I say "Assfuck IBM with a sharp stick for giving jobs to foreigners within US borders." If they want to do it in India, fine, but we all know they want to do a labor arbitrage. Buy low in India, then sell high in the USA. If I get the chance to vote against that shit, I will. Occasionally, (once in a lifetime so far for me) we get the chance to vote for someone who says something along the lines of "I will make companies like IBM either hire Americans for American jobs, or they can face the retraction of their business license or corporate charter." I guarantee if you did that you'd see some results. FYI, I really don't give a fuck if that same politician says "oh, and we'll protect the snowflakes, wage social justice war, and build a shrine to Mexicans and the LGBTQIAPK." Now perhaps the way-too-loud-left can finally figure out why they shed so many tears in 2016. People like me are willing to overlook at LOT to get back at these same elites who have been gaming the H1B system, the same way an carpenter in Phoenix knows damn good and well that his wages are being capped by illegal immigration.