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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: 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.