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IBM Businesses The Courts United States

IBM is Being Sued For Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands (bloomberg.com) 115

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.
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IBM is Being Sued For Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • You gotta be shitting me.

  • Surely IBM has more than three employees over 40?
    • by mcl630 ( 1839996 )

      If you had read a couple sentences further:

      ...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...

      • My point was, it would be difficult to prove that IBM is conducting age discrimination unless they got rid of all employees over a certain age. Maybe these employees accepted too many raises in their time at IBM and are now being canned because they are making more money than their skills are worth to the company. There is going to be a strong correlation between age and salary.
    • HAD more than 3 employees over 40. Get your tenses right.

  • by Punknubbins ( 768822 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @04:44PM (#57330446)
    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.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Jeezus spelling grammar fail, my eyes are bleeding.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not just IBM. This happened to my parent and colleagues in a major hospital in the area. Very experienced. One was even given a regional award that was the sort of thing that was covered in the local media, interviews, etc. Laid off, same drill. Told they could apply for other positions in the same place, but those just happened to be lower paying. The higher-ups were given a bonus for the number of staff they did this to. This got around and resulted in a threatened lawsuit, and the person threatening the

  • Office Space (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alexhs ( 877055 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @04:44PM (#57330450) Homepage Journal

    - 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...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2018 @04:47PM (#57330474)

    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.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I am waiting for the class action against tech giants for firing US citizens in favor of H1-B workers.

      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.)

    • by sglines ( 543315 )

      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 taxe

  • Asking for a friend.

  • 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?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The US workforce is in America, Einstein-san. If they're replaced with immigrant "non-Americans" that's still "the American workforce" because it's in America.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @05:02PM (#57330542)

    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.

    • 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.... [slashdot.org]

      • 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 pra

        • 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.

    • My older skills are in very high demand. C, embedded systems, firmware, RTOS, etc. What you do not want are the same skills that millions of other people also have. If someone learns only the fashionable stuff they may find themselves competing for junior level jobs against recent grads and foreign workers.

      • 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.

    • 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
      • 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 departm

    • 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.

      Bingo. This and this and this, forever. I just don't get why people fail to grasp at the reality of it.

      If someone wants to try their luck and grey it out at a large company, be my guest. It can be a smart move, specially for accruing benefits (and large severance packages.) But one should be ready for the big hammer to come down. That is, getting laid off would be part of the plan.

      Moving strategically from job to job is *the* way to raise one's salaries and benefits (I call it "dynamic job security"). O

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      For me, it was difficult to get a job because of my multiple disabilities even when I was young after college. :(

  • by barc0001 ( 173002 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @05:03PM (#57330544)

    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.

    • by Taelron ( 1046946 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @01:30AM (#57332528)
      They get caught doing this every 10 years or so.
      Happened to a family member that worked for IBM in the 90s. They laid off everyone over ~50 without allowing them to look for new positions internally. Anyone under 50 but over 45 was supposed to be allowed two weeks to search the internal job postings and apply before being let go. Incidentally the location manager where my family member was went on vacation for two weeks without giving anyone access to the job board. When the manager came back, everyone only had a day or two left before being forced out.
      To make it more insulting, they were all told their positions were no longer needed and they were being downsized. But a hiring manager didn't secure their LotusNotes calendar and people being forced out were able to see interviews scheduled for new younger people for basically their jobs (same description but different title).
      It took 10 years for that class action suit over ageism to finally get settled. In the early to mid 2000s there was another story about IBM pulling the ageism bit again.
      And now again... Definitely not a company that is loyal to its people...
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wonder if this is what happened to BA recently, when their IT system was down for days and lots of people couldn't fly. They were doing a migration with support from IBM as I recall.

    • Sounds to me like IBM figured out that younger workers can do the job they used to delegate to older and better paid workers and decided not to bother with the more expensive workers.

      It sucks for more expensive workers, but it does make sense when the first and foremost goal of any company is to create as much value for it's shareholders trough profits and an increase in the share price.
      • > Sounds to me like IBM figured out that younger workers can do the job they used to delegate to older and better paid workers

        That's the open question though. CAN the younger workers really do the same job? If a team with 20 years of experience can solve a problem in an hour or two, but a bunch of younger workers take all day or into the next day, I'd say they can't do the same job.

        It's also worth noting that the utter shit show that is the Phoenix Payroll system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix

        • Well the fact that they've been doing it for this long would suggest that it does work and the cost savings outweigh any issues by the loss of experience. If it wasn't working it would have been noticeable and even stopped or reversed by now, but it hasn't been. Additionally, you also see a lot of laid off older workers being re-hired as contractors with worse benefits and pay so it's clearly about the cost rather than the age of the affected workers.

          We are also talking about IBM getting rid of people wi
  • ... 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 O

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      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

      But my marketing bullshit is out-of-date also. "Synergy" is obsolete, it seems.

  • Co-location (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gavrielkay ( 1819320 ) on Monday September 17, 2018 @06:23PM (#57330972)
    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.
  • 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

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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...

  • IBM
    UBM
    We all BM
    for IBM
  • by Anonymous Coward

    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....

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @02:52AM (#57332700)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @03:05AM (#57332736)

    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

    • Oddly enough, IBM had published an internal memo that they wanted to hire more younger workers to connect to the younger market base or whatever, and stressed that their older workforce were valuable workers with large amounts of skill and experience they must absolutely retain for strategic purposes.

      That suggests IBM would have a strategy of hiring younger workers and passing over older applicants, but not that they should be engaging in rounds of layoffs of their aging workforce. It's still enough to

  • Tax IBM Revenue, not Profit

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