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: 5, Interesting) by gznork26 on Saturday January 12 2019, @12:26AM (1 child)
My wife was an Instructional Designer for Rational Software before IBM bought that company. There was an age discrimination suit underway at that time as well. The tactic that was used to push her out was being undermined by her management, such as blocking her access to resources needed to perform her job, and bullying her in various ways. She ended up in the psych ward after becoming suicidal over it. Anyway, at that time, IBM had a dispute resolution process that entailed reporting this to a guy in corporate, who was also a bully, so it was not possible to get anything close to a resolution aside from quitting and thereby not being able to join the class action.
Does anyone here have any reports from insiders on how they have been treating people approaching their cut-off age?
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:05AM
No, I don't. But what I can tell you is that a mass-layoff in the state of California is subject to rules. When a mass-layoff occurs, the corporation has to make public the job titles and other non-personally-identifying information. To legally perform a mass-layoff in California is to show, amongst other aspects, that the entity is not performing age-discrimination.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @12:39AM (16 children)
Maybe if some of these people would retire and open up the positions in management to the younger generations there wouldn't be so much age discrimination. By the time these boomers retire its going to be a slick tongued gen-z kid taking the spot rather than the experienced gen-x who followed the same "loyalty to the company path" or the drowning in student loans millennial.
My father in law talks often talks down about his employees who have worked loyally for the company, for bad pay, and would someday like to advance to a position in management. At the same time he complains new employees aren't loyal because they don't foresee ever having a chance at advancement. Boomer managers have been so long outside of the competitive workforce that they don't understand just how bad their "just shake the guys hand, be loyal, and be happy with minimum wage" is ruining things for the younger generations. The 20 he made an hour as a intro level tech guy at a phone company back in the 70s is not the same 20/hour cap he will only give his employees if they get five certifications and have a bachelors degree.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @12:51AM (15 children)
You realize you are talking about people in their 50s right? Most of the boomers at this point *are* retiring. Also the *entire* market has changed. You may have noticed the computers that replaced everything. You are also competing with people on other sides of the world who *do* work for peanuts.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:10AM (6 children)
I work for a large corporation. From the lowliest floor workers all the way up to engineering management, you have motherfuckers walking in canes and otherwise exhibiting Parkinsonism. They have medical issues, and will cling with the rest of their lives to their employment, because of those medical bennies. And in case you didn't get the memo, medical care is very expensive. Retiring with issues and not having George Soros-levels of wealth would mean their death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:43AM
If only, if only, you could speak normally..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @09:54AM (3 children)
FTFY.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:25PM (2 children)
Yes they've got those high taxes to pay for what they too called Medicare. You know: For All.
But in the US, most salaried employees and many hourly ones get employer-paid health insurance that actually costs quite a lot _more_ than those Canadian Medicare taxes. Those costs are passed on to consumers and to businesses in the form of higher prices for American-made products and services.
That so many other countries are Stealing Our Jerbs is due to those poor fuckers having no health care of any sort.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @04:33AM (1 child)
Just to get insurance cost me last year about 12,000 dollars. I finally got hired by someone it is now about 6k. It had a 6k deductible. I know some people who were paying 24k.
In 2000 that amount of insurance would have been the cadillac insurance plan (think 20 dollar co-pay no max). That ended in 2008. Sure I can keep my doctor. If I could afford it.
We threw more money on the money bon-fire of healthcare and somehow magically expected costs to go down. They didn't.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday January 14 2019, @12:39PM
This because many Sole Proprietors - such as myself - and Partners have Pre-Existing Conditions, as well as that most new jobs are created by small companies.
I at first planned to hire five Web Engineers out of an Indiegogo, but whatever my Neurological Disorder is leaves me unable to manage other coders. So instead, on Wednesday February 20th I'm launching a campaign to raise $60,000 - $40,000 to pay for very modest living expenses and $20,000 for Portland Custom Software Design. Here's a placeholder crowdfunding pitch - I'll write the whole thing later this morning:
(That's it's The Global Employer Index [soggy.jobs] and not The Global Computer Industry Index [soggy.jobs] is due to my plan to cover lots of other occupations; presently I've got just a start on Cafe Jobs.
The total of sixty grand would enable me to get off The Government Tit then live in a very modest way for one year. Were I to get a regular W2 job, my salary would be $120k - $140k but really I am _much_ happier living in quite a modest way.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @04:35AM
you have motherfuckers walking in canes and otherwise exhibiting Parkinsonism.
I somehow doubt that. I have worked in many large corps and *never* have seen anything like that.
(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).
(Score: 2, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:34AM (1 child)
Age discrimination laws only apply to old people. It's a government regulation that defines anyone over 40 as a protected class and prevents discrimination due to membership.
This is government sponsored ageism.
I think it's kind of funny/ironic. But it sure seems like some folks who should be outraged about this behavior are awful quiet...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:33AM
Unlike the gender wage gap lie, older people often command higher salaries. If a younger person can do the job better (which millennials cannot), companies should be free to replace the older employee. No problem when the rest of the discriminatory hiring laws have been torn up is there?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:57AM
It just so happens that every person that is "under-performing", and paid too much over the median are "old."
Its not that hard to make your company requirements require a young workforce.
Will the free market figure this out?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:20PM
But unlike AC, I not only started a business, but that business does _only_ coding for which age and experience is actually valued: drivers and embedded. I far prefer GUI, but only kids can get GUI work these days.
I was constantly dismayed to be interviewed at mobile startups by hiring managers young enough to be my children.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]