Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
This is AT&T right now.
The most recent round of layoffs were determined by a single metric. Your physical office location.
If you work outside of company declared " Collaboration Zones " your continued employment is questionable at best.
Your skillset or value you bring to the company is irrelevant.
Years of experience and / or wisdom in technology X or subject matter ( still in use by the Telco ) also irrelevant.
Entire Teams were wiped out and the work they were doing is now sitting idle piling up because no one is left to deal with it.
The company doesn't fully understand the damage they have done yet but, make no mistake about it, it will come back to bite them.
The company hasn't disclosed neither how many nor who they have let go. We find out when we try to call a colleague about day to day
business and learn they were let go.
Personally, I kick around the idea that the Collaboration Zones are merely a smokescreen for the true nature of the layoffs. That being the
reduction of older / high seniority employees whose benefit packages are grandfathered in vs a new hire. ( Translation: They cost more )
The scary part ?
This is only the first round of layoffs this year. More are coming.
Boy, things sure are great for us ununionized Silicon Valley workers!
* Pay that hasn't risen in more than a decade, while cost of living more than doubled. Check!
* Long hours with no overtime. Check!
* No time off. Check!
* No job security. Check!
* No career development path. Check!
* No autonomy. Check!
* Always managed by nepotists with no technical background. Check!
* Preposterously one-sided "contacts", required by every employer. Check!
* Replaced by lawfully-imported H1B scabs at every opportunity. Check!
* Required to work on unethical software (snooping, "ads", lawful fraud, etc) or be immediately shitcanned. Check!
Boy oh boy, it sure is great to be a worker with no rights, no voice, and no union.
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.