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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.
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
As people age, their salary expectations increase, but often their skills don't.
If they were really as valuable as they think they are, then some enterprising company should be able to hire them all and out-compete the companies staffed by younglings. Obviously, that isn't happening.
Most people don't get old and wise. They just get old.
Said the guy who's under 40. What you don't realize is that with age comes perspective. What you think is some great hot idea, an experienced guy can tell you why it's a bad idea and poke holes in the concept.
I didn't even get in on Slashdot when it was fresh, yet my user ID should tell you how old I am.