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IBM is still refusing to turn over documents in a bombshell age-discrimination lawsuit that attorneys representing plaintiff Jonathan Langley believe will show Big Blue has deliberately and systematically shed older workers.
"IBM simply refuses to produce any of [the documents] in violation of the requirements of open and honest discovery," Langley's legal team said in a motion filed on Tuesday in a Texas court to compel IBM to cooperate.
The IT titan also sealed internal confidential files submitted by Langley to the court, though we were able to glimpse them before they were pulled from public view. More on that in a moment.
Langley, who joined Big Blue in 1993 and was worldwide program director and sales lead of IBM's Bluemix cloud service when he was laid off in 2017, claims the IT giant broke the US Age Discrimination in Employment Act when it let him go in pursuit of a multi-year campaign to de-age its workforce. For one thing, he was praised for his work and landed a $20,000 performance-linked bonus just two months before he was kicked out, leading him to accuse the biz of dropping him purely because he had turned 60.
Last month, IBM was accused by Langley's lawyers of attempting to derail the lawsuit by blocking discovery requests and narrowing its focus away from the claims of systematic discrimination.
In March 2018, ProPublica and Mother Jones reported that IBM for years has been implementing a layoff strategy that targeted older workers. According to the report, IBM is estimated to have rid itself of 20,000 workers age 40 or older between 2014 and 2018, representing about 60 per cent of job cuts since then.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:37AM (7 children)
Modded "informative". I'm 62, and not even properly a "boomer". The baby boom began in 1945, and the elders among them are 74 years old. If we say that the boom lasted for ten years, the youngest among them are 64. That makes my boss the youngest of the boomers, and she is planning retirement, just hasn't put a definite date on it. It may be worth noting that all those eighty-something really rich bastards are too old to be boomers. They are the ones who really screw us all over, like George Soros, and Rupert Murdoch.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:59AM (6 children)
Last I heard Boomer was 1945-1964, with a significant division between the older and younger ones. You'd fall in as a younger boomer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:13AM (5 children)
We hear lots of things. Boomers remember the fifties, and all the cool iconic stuff that happened during the fifties. About all that I accomplished during the fifties, was being weaned, learning to dress myself, and conning Grandma into buying and/or baking more cookies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:19AM (4 children)
Well, now I'm hearing it from the Webster dictionary [merriam-webster.com] and the US Census Bureau [davemanuel.com]. What drives their definitions is the duration of the period of high birth rate (hence the name "baby boomer") which apparently ran from 1946 to 1964. For that definition, the shared experiences of the generation are secondary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:08AM (3 children)
Well aren't you an obvious a "Me"-lennial!
I don't think you'll be so pragmatic or unsympathetic when you get turfed from your job when you turn 52.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:16PM (2 children)
Why would that happen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:58PM (1 child)
Hey, I didn't think it would happen to me...then about a year ago, 'there's the door, don't let it hit you on the way out' and I was replaced by a younger model, that I'd fucking trained up on *one* aspect of the post (the rest he's clueless on) I'm north of 52, he's south of 30.
For my skillset(s), I expected to walk into another job almost immediately....almost a year later, I can't believe how fucking stupid and naive I was to think that, and every time I hear some wanker on television bleating about lack of skilled workers I reach for my (sadly) imaginary Carl Gustaf [wikipedia.org] [still the favourite 'toy' I've ever played with even after all these years]
I suppose the moral of the story is (as I was told decades ago): be your own boss.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 13 2019, @04:40AM
But I happen to be in a business that hires a lot of older people, because they're cheap and reliable. They start playing games with laying off or not hiring people over 52 and they'll run out of people to do the work (and actually have experience in the business).