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IBM Accused of Violating Federal Anti-Age Discrimination Law (propublica.org)
A group of ex-employees filed a lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of failing to comply with a law requiring companies to disclose the ages of people over 40 who have been laid off. The suit also alleges that the company has improperly prevented workers from combining to challenge their ousters. From a report: It is the second broad legal action against IBM since a 2018 ProPublica story that documented widespread age discrimination by the company in its global restructuring. The former employees are asking the court to invalidate a written agreement that IBM requires its employees to sign to receive severance pay. Under the document's provisions, workers agree to give up any right to challenge their dismissal in court. Until now, most age-related legal actions contesting an IBM layoff have been brought by the rare ex-worker who refused to sign the agreement and left without severance.
If the district court were to agree that IBM's separation agreement is invalid, it could open the company up to lawsuits by tens of thousands of older workers IBM has laid off in recent years. Today's lawsuit and the string of other cases filed in the wake of ProPublica's story face steep odds as a result of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts that curtailed workers' ability to challenge employers' staffing decisions. The rationale is to limit what federal judges view as cumbersome, costly cases that hamstring both employers and the courts.
If the district court were to agree that IBM's separation agreement is invalid, it could open the company up to lawsuits by tens of thousands of older workers IBM has laid off in recent years. Today's lawsuit and the string of other cases filed in the wake of ProPublica's story face steep odds as a result of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts that curtailed workers' ability to challenge employers' staffing decisions. The rationale is to limit what federal judges view as cumbersome, costly cases that hamstring both employers and the courts.
It ain't just IBM. Shall we take a look at the average employee age at Facebook? Google? People over 50 don't get interviews, don't get hired, and are the first out the door when the layoffs come. I thank god every day that I went into stodgy defense work, where young people generally don't want to work and being over 50 is not seen as a deal breaker (my PhD probably doesn't hurt either), and I've had 25 years of steady employment.
Ok it's better to say we did not follow H1B laws and layed off USC's just to replace them with H1B's
Also level 1 help desk is master's degree preferred (and the pay is no where near any thing to cover the loans for that)
If we only had an UNION!!!!
It's the IBM way!
You'd have to prove they are discriminating before you can hope to combine into a class action like that. These aren't union positions, you can't expect to force group arbitration rules beyond what the contract stipulates.
The other remedy is a lawsuit, where one or a group of people prove they were discriminated against illegally and a judge agrees and grants class-action status. Before they win however what "rights" or laws are being violated, (aside from the 40+ termination disclosure) by not allowing those fired to challenge their firings collectively within the company HR framework?
It's impossible for us to know unless we see the specific employment contract language they agreed to. *(assuming IBM is in compliance under employment laws otherwise, which is also unknown to us)
It's definitely not a slam dunk to get class action status. If IBM is provably violating the disclosure law however, they just might get it.
If by "Union" you mean an organization structure that is imposed on every single worker regardless of membership, including the need to pay dues, and which might be backed by special rights according to legislation, well then you can fuck right off!
America is free country, comrade.
You mean the people that fix what the script kiddies, sorry entry level software engineers, cobble together from google searches? Experience in this sort of field is almost always worth it, so dont kid yourself
Porn stars don't get fired. They get jobs singing adult contemporary pieces on cruise ships and mountain resorts
I'm past mid-life and happily earning less after inflation working for a charity than I was 20 years ago in corporate.
Now, if I went back to corporate and had fresh skills, would I expect to be paid as if I had 20+ years experience? Not unless I was applying for a job that required it. I would expect to start at the lowest amount my competition would accept. If it's an entry-level programming job that I'm qualified for, then I'll set my expectations accordingly. If it's a senior programming job that requires 10 years experience and I have it, I'll expect to be paid accordingly.
Unions include agreements for collective bargaining when people are fired and allege discrimination, forcing the company to explain itself and address outstanding concerns at the very least. No, you have no concept.
Maybe that's because instead of thinking for yourself, you're a multi-national corporatist Republican troll?
Can we not be free of old people smell in the workplace? Is wanting that so wrong?
Gen Xers all smell of craft ale and aging teen spirit, unlike Millennials who all smell of celebrity fragrance and vape smoke.
Unions include agreements for collective bargaining when people are fired and allege discrimination, forcing the company to explain itself and address outstanding concerns at the very least. No, you have no concept.
Maybe that's because instead of thinking for yourself, you're a multi-national corporatist Republican troll?
No, I come from an area that still has a lot of strong unions, and I know what they actually do.
Back in the '90s, when I worked at IBM, I was appalled at the people they let go. Age was clearly a factor, followed by the number of letters behind a person's name. Up to that point in time, the company had been incredibly successful and never had to consider layoffs before, so the primary decision point was literally who had a full retirement followed by degrees, type and where are they from. Guess how many mainframe system admins were over 50 with only high school? The damage done to the company was incredible and measurable.
Now, being older and wiser, I have seen many, many layoffs from different companies with no clear criteria or thought to what would happen after the layoffs were complete - they're generally done to bring quarterly costs into line with investor's expectations with little lip service being put to only keeping the most productive employees.
So, while I can see the reason for tracking the demographics of who a company fires is important, I'm not aware of any cases where layoffs improved the long term health of the company or that any demographic study would show that the layoffs were done in a strategic and effective manner.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Porn stars don't get fired. They get jobs singing adult contemporary pieces on cruise ships and mountain resorts
Man, I've got to get my wife to consider something other than Disney for our next vacation.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
It's a small price to pay for the opportunity to be corporate cannon fodder.
And the decomposing flesh of things they've killed.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
When Cisco laid me off at age 56, they did cover their bases. The layoff came with a stack of paper an inch thick with statistics of the ages of those laid off, showing they were fully prepared to defend themselves against any claim of age discrimination.
They also included a very generous severance package.
And, if you signed an agreement to not sue them for age discrimination, that very generous severance package became very *VERY* generous.
See point 1 above, they were fully prepared to defend themselves against any claim of age discrimination.
Hey, when I got home from getting laid off, right there in my Gmail inbox was an email from a recruiter at the place I'm currently working. The layoff turned out to be a rather substantial windfall.
OK then
They... protect their union members from discrimination and unjust policies, daily. Right now. Sorry you can't find a job on a work day, that's very sad, GOP. I hear coal's coming back any day now... any day now...
Go underground and wait, maybe?
When it comes to regular full time employees, the older you are the more you are paid. It makes a lot of sense to trim the fat and start eliminating senior positions in favor of lower paying entry level positions. There are so many new college grads hungry for a job.
Are older employees more productive? perhaps. But the difference in pay isn't explained by the perceived productivity alone.
What a surprise. IBM always breaks the law.
Kind of slow for the Feds to just figure this out.
Dont you know stock buy backs cost money?
^ Found the same multi-national corporatist Republican troll again, not an American with a job... sorry Ivan, you just don't matter here. (Trump hangs either way too. Enjoy!)
Republicanism never had flesh, it was always just a sub-believable lie told between inbred rubes. Sorry it's finally dying but not sorry, hang them all for treason and be done with their bullshit. They love victimstance, give it to them.
"You know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? They take them out and shoot them."
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
IBM Ages and Wages people out ALL THE TIME! If the numbers were ever publish about the age and salary of everyone they "layed off" you would see this. You won't see millennials being "layed off".... They are young and will work for cheap! Wait - most companies are starting to do this now....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
He said you're free to organize as you like, just not impose, especially through law.
I'm an American, not an Unamerican; I set my own schedule. I decide what a weekend is.
Hi APK, you obsessive little shit.
ZIP
Unions sound great, but they are far from sunshine and roses. My father retired from GM after 30 years in the union. I worked there over the summer a few years before my father retired. What I experienced there was the absolute minimum amount of work you could get out each employee. A job on the assembly line is literally the same two to three actions repeated every minute for hours on end. Screw in this bolt, push in this clip, roll up the window. The only qualification was seniority, and it was a constant fight of plant seniority vs company seniority, with the victor being awarded ever easier jobs.
The union leadership sent out weekly pamphlets meant to re-enforce an 'us vs them' narrative. The one I remember most was about the company proposing rules about when you could use your phone while working. This rule was meant to address the increasing line failures due to phone usage, which cost ~$20k per minute and frequently extended into hours. This could have been more readily addressed by firing the people causing outages due to negligence, but the union would never allow that. So the cost of the failure was instead distributed over the entire staff in the form of restrictions. The pamphlet was titled 'they're trying to fit 10lbs of shit into a 5lb bag". Rather than lamenting the generalized consequences for the actions of a specific few, the union leadership aimed to inspire outrage at the very idea of consequences. Their proposal was that the company should invest in further failsafes to prevent each specific event in the future.
There's a reason all that work is being off-shored. Careers like my father's simply don't exist anymore. Just like the UAW, the initial gains would probably be pretty strong. Ultimately, it would just force companies to pay more and more for developers who aren't producing, until those companies simply stop hiring altogether. If I remember correctly, IBM is the biggest client of tata or infosys, and every major tech company is lobbying to get the H1b cap raised. Why anyone would think a union would benefit domestic developers is simply beyond me.
Unions are the biggest political donation block in the entire country. What metric are you using to classify 'anti-union propaganda' as strong? Is it just the number of people that don't buy into the 'pro-union propaganda'?
You expect a violently imposed monopoly to save society from a voluntarily grown monopoly. That's absurd.
This doesn't strike me with surprise at all. My dad was an IBMer who was lucky enough to get downsized in December right before Christmas (around 10 years ago). He was in his mid-50s at the time and had so much DB/2 and other database knowledge IBM based their certification programs off of his skills. He always received impeccable performance reviews and worked hard for the company. I have no doubt some shithead in IBM HR did a SELECT employ_ID WHERE emp_age >50 and went on a "cost savings" massacre. These RIFs are baldfaced attacks on older employees whose only crime is they couldn't stop the aging process. They have all built decades of specialized and technical skills making them invaluable resources. IBM doesn't give a shit about how it treats its employees and it shows in their years of declining revenues. They're on a slow death-march into the sea with this current strategy, which is unfortunate to see a once great company fall apart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States
And this happens in China as well, I've spoken to friends over there [and I'm speaking about Chinese workers and Chinese citizens].
Capitalism is what it is . . . -- sgt_doom
. . . I was standing in line in the grocery store, with two Micro$oft types behind me, who believed they had a brilliant idea. After listening to them for five minutes, and patiently explained that their earth resource technology had already been developed by Perkin Elmer and had been in operation for almost 20 to 30 years.
ok? what part of what he posted in this thread is a lie? If a known liar observes that water is wet, does it mean the whole world is actually a desert?
lol, you think unions protect their member. I've worked at a couple factory places with unions and almost everyone hates them. It's like a bureaucracy with power over both the employer and employee. They do the absolute minimum, but at the same time if anything threatens their power, they will fight it full on. Even the long term employees complain how unfair the union is to the employer and how it reduces the quality of life at work.