Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans IBM, which last year insisted "there was (and is) no systemic age discrimination" at the mainframe giant, has again been sued for age discrimination. The complaint [PDF], filed Wednesday in a New York federal district court on behalf of plaintiffs Pamela Wimbish, 62, and Patricia Onken, 66, says that contrary to CEO Arvind …
Change you wishing for does not typically take place in publicly traded companies with incestuous boards of directors. The renumeration plans for execs are such that all employees are considered cannon fodder. If we look specifically at IBM, Study how Arvind did the power play on Jim Whitehurst, or after the rush to judgement on Bob Moffat, the Board has to take their 3rd choice of Ginnie R (worst exec in history of comp) as the succession planned 1 and 2 said no thanks and left with their ethics.
IBM lost its way in the 90s and current course speed shows no signs of regaining the core beliefs set by the founders
It was easier to be a paternal company with jobs-for-life when they had a hardware monopoly. Fortune 500 are still using that hardware and the software that goes with it but every company outside the 500 (and probably most outside the Fortune 100,) are doing their best to get rid of the old iron and nobody is writing new code for it(the old stuff.) IT tech is a much more competitive environment now, brutally so. Software is pretty fungible and the move to cloud tech has been devastating for old-line on-premise software sellers.
"At what point does a company suddenly realise that it is not simply a quarterly profit and loss account but an essential part of a community?"
I think that's usually as they are winding down operations because they've gone bankrupt and the last person is turning out the lights. Assuming it ever happens at all, because a lot of people at the C-Suite level are sociopaths. At least in the colloquial sense, even if they may not fit the clinical definition. They don't give a shit about other people.
Arvind made that company-wide video statement live in March 2023 after laying off thousands in Feb that he "didn't foresee more layoffs". He lied his ass off to all of us. You don't lay off thousands more in less than a month without knowing that you are going to do so, and that's exactly what happened in April. IT services, especially Security got decimated. I was one of them, and most of us were there for over 10 years, and over 45, with high performance ratings. They lay off employees specifically for age, get caught, and the "punishment" is always "here's a small fine that won't impact your bottom line in the slightest, just don't do it again, ok?". It's bs, and they really need to be held accountable for age discrimination. Fines aren't enough. Actual jail time for these liars might actually change things.
"Fines aren't enough. Actual jail time for these liars might actually change things."
An award of substantial damages against the actual executive from an individual who's been laid off might be even better. At least for the first claimant and the next few until the exec's been bankrupted.
It's not that the fines are inadequate, the problem is where the money to pay the fines comes from.
The C suite dwellers may and probably are the guilty party but the fine will be paid by the company so charges may increase, employees may get a lower raise if any, some stockholders might get a slightly lower dividend. However one thing you can guarantee is the C suite occupants will not be a single penny out of pocket, their bonuses, raises, pension contributions and stock options will be intact and untouched.
Until the guilty parties are held personally to blame and are punished accordingly there is no incentive for them to behave within the law.
Well, yes, that's essentially what the doctor wrote in the post you're responding to.
Of course, even if fines were levied against the C-suite-sitters personally, they're likely indemnified by the corporation, and it probably backs that with an insurance policy. At least in the US. (We sometimes see that in academia when, for example, a dean is a defendant in an employment-rights case and loses; the school, or its insurer, ends up picking up the tab.) So the court would have to order that contractual provision vacated, and that would get appealed and quite possibly overturned – and perhaps the entire lower-court decision, or at least penalty phase, with it.
In America executives of major corporations have a lot of power and freedom to abuse it. Sometimes they overstep – Elizabeth Holmes, Ken Lay, Bernard Ebbers are examples. But most of them get by unscathed.
Everyone above the age of 40 should just walk out.
In the same month.
When the fallout settles, IBM will have gaggles of kids running everything (over the cliff).
How is it that IBM still exists ? Why give money to IBM ? All of their good consultants are gone, on going to be let go. There's no experience left in there.
Just leave IBM to die in its corner. The husk is all that's left anyway.
"When the fallout settles, IBM will have gaggles of kids running everything (over the cliff)."
And that's different from now... how?
IBM has been selling off everything good about the company over the past decades. They sold off their ThinkPad business, HDD business, their Big Blue division... All the things that IBM used to be known for they've sold off to other companies. I'm not even really sure what IBM does nowadays. Once upon a time they were set to be a full-service provider. Now the only thing they seem to be known for is getting sued for really clumsy layoffs that are obviously targeting older workers.
1625.2 Discrimination prohibited by the Act.
The US has an "Age discrimination Act". Although the Anglo-Saxon world never was blessed by the great legal system Napoleon introduced in continental Europe, the text of the Act is clear enough to make some sense out of it.
In the last 5 years enough cases surfaced to start criminal investigations against IBM and the managers initiating those illegal actions, the HR executives implementing those decisions should also be targeted. Since it was done on a large scale, seems to be systematic with clear evidence it came from the top down, it would be great to see some high level white collars share quality time with fellow MS-13 inmates, which in it self is a great incentive to prevent future repetition of such events.
Steal a chocolate from a shop get 20 years, pay yourself millions in bonuses and fire thousands because you can even breaking laws like the abovementioned, you get nothing but more bonuses.
Yup America is the land of the free... just not sure free of what.
Oligarchs are free to break the law with abandon. What's even worse is how US politicians pretend like we're somehow better than places like Russia or Ukraine when it comes to corruption. Then you look at people like Clarence Thomas, who's in the news again for taking money/accepting gifts from right-wing nutjobs who bring a lot of cases before the Supreme Court, and not disclosing it or recusing himself from those cases.
Although the Anglo-Saxon world never was blessed by the great legal system Napoleon introduced in continental Europe
Ah yes, Napoleon's "you have no rights at all, but I graciously allow you the right to X" versus common law's "you can do anything you want, EXCEPT X".
Notably, common law makes up 40% of the worlds GDP, and Napoleonic law jurisdictions represent 23% of the worlds GDP.
"Ah yes, Napoleon's "you have no rights at all, but I graciously allow you the right to X"
I rather doubt that is correct - one of those claims that pops up every now and then. Could you provide a source for that? (Something more reliable than a Brexit party (or whatever they call themselves now) leaflet.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I've read a few books about it, both common law and civil (European) lawy.
Fortunately, Kevin Underhill has written a classic article which explains everything you need to know about the difference between civil- and common-law systems, "Way Less Than You Need to Know About the Civil- and Common-Law Systems".
At least regarding bee swarms.
You fail to appreciate the core motivation for slavery was greed, and the measurement of this is extreme inbalance of reward between those who did the work and those calling themselves the leader. This situation today is the same.
THe sad thing is how many brainwashed people vote me down when they are actually on the lower paid side.
Only fools think slavery was about race, slavery has existed all over the world since the beginning of time. Its always been about greed, race is just one minor ex cuse used to fool idiots.
Getting rid of the staff before you've actually deployed the new capabilities in any kind of workable manner. All too familiar.
Still, could be worse. I can think of examples of payrolls being outsourced to India, in order to shut down a much-more-expensive UK offices. It is no accident that following that decision, there were recorded incidents theft of personal data for other uses.
One supposes an AI does not have any particular motivations to it's actions, other than those it has been told by it's programmers. A minor advantage over giving the job to a sweatshop to do.
The concept of the High Programmers in the Paranoia RPG does rather come to mind here; where the directives of the "computer" are set by a minority of deranged individuals. (For those unfamiliar with the setting, think Fallout bunker, with the "computer" being the AI in charge of running society).
Not when you're time frame for some target is 6 months or less, while the retirement of the target is more than a year away. Target might be reduced costs, turn loss to profit, etc, etc. Old employees in many jurisdictions also have a higher "on-cost" due to seniority bonuses, additional retirement funding, etc.
Because no executive ever thinks beyond two days. 1 - their next quarter's bonus targets and 2 - vesting date of shares. No long term survival of the company, planet, customers, environment or (other) people. There is no resource than cannot be sacrificed. Ethics are a nice tickbox on a triple bottom line report that can be ignored 99.999% of the time. Me and mine is the only mindset.
Required to calm the soul after taking a look at the emotional poverty of the world business and government leaders, perhaps more than one. --->
SO, without having to go all Google on it :o)
anyone know the ages of the C Suite people at all ?
fairly safe to say they are NOT kids, doubtful they even have any kids still at home, so how come the 'runway' only takes off from those below them ?
just another corp, making money to keep a very small band of nobs very rich :o(
Anti-age discrimination laws in the large corporate world are a joke. All these companies are categorically and routinely discriminating against older workers. There is no way to quantify how much discrimination is going on because there is no corporate reporting of workforce by age. Contrast this to anti discrimination laws for race and gender. Today, companies must report the make up of their work force by gender and race on a continuing basis. This public reporting has made a major impact in addressing these forms of discrimination, because the information is so visible. However, there is no legal requirement for the same companies to report the make up of their workforces by age. So the problem remains invisible. Corporations routinely let go older workers, most often by "redefining" positions, only to see a year later that the same positions are in place once again. Small hi-tech start ups won't even hire an older worker as they expand, because "they won't fit our culture". I laugh when I hear on one side companies complaining that there are not enough skilled workers to fill hi-tech jobs, while on the other hand in most hi-tech companies no one over 50 years old can even get a job interview, regardless of their skill sets. HR doesn't have to ask your age. All they need is the year you graduated from college, and that is legal to ask. The sad thing is that unlike racism and sexism, the problem isn't obvious or glaring to younger workers because it doesn't impact their friends and associates, so they don't see it. But everyone in hi-tech will personally experience this discrimination if they work long enough and desire to continue to work.
A few comments up i mentioned that giving only bonuses to corporate leaders is discrimination and i got quite a few downvotes and not a single up vote...
I really dont get it - why so many people cant see this new discrimination right in front of their eyes, just like the idiots of the American south who couldnt see the inequality and evil of slavery being justified by their local preacher.
hahah...
theres an even bigger one and you are blind to it... - leadership bonuses.... you are so blind you cant even see this. What makes you think that corporate leaders deserve a bonus of millions and more and everyone else gets zero ?
Like many of the favorite rock bands of the 70's and 80's, IBM is still around but not quite the same thing. Oh there are a few original members around but mainly it is a bunch of new faces making a living off the reputation created by others. And while I sympathize with those let go because they liked their job and wanted to continue, in no way should it have come as a surprise. The IBM of old was built on mainframes, mini-computers, and the original PCs. The IBM of today is a hollowed out shadow of that behemoth trying to avoid being shutdown for the last time.
First off, where the hell are IBM's shareholders? The company is seemingly constantly being sued for age discrimination, so why hasn't the board, and/or shareholders, started cleaning house at the C-Suite? Even if, and it seems to be a pretty big if, but even if all the lawsuits are completely baseless, the fact that they continue to happen under the watch of current leadership means something is amiss. This is an example of why the US needs to give the EEOC the ability to initiate investigations into companies even without someone filing a complaint. If the EEOC director in the district where IBM's HQ keeps sees stories about IBM being sued for age discrimination, maybe they think it's a good idea to send someone over to conduct an unannounced review of IBM's records to see if there's something going on the agency needs to slap down.
Second, doesn't anyone at IBM think these things through? I mean... if you're going to fire a bunch of people in HR, you need to be extra careful because HR is the keeper of company secrets and tends to know where all the bodies are buried because they're the ones who buried them. I mean, the person mentioned in the article who saw her own name on a list of people to fire, could easily look up the records of the people on that list to find out their ages and probably also check past performance reviews. They could print all this off -- who would think it odd that an HR rep is printing off HR records? -- exfiltrate it from the company, and since they have a good-faith belief that it is evidence of the commission of a crime, would be completely in the clear legally (in the US at least) in turning it over to the appropriate regulatory body. IBM wouldn't be able to do dick about it except huff and puff. IBM deserves to be nailed to the wall for sheer incompetence alone. The fact that it's very clearly against the law is also a reason to nail them to the wall with railroad spikes. How is it people who are getting paid millions of dollars can't seem to figure out things that should be obvious to anyone who's ever been a manager and should have had some basic training on US employment law? IBM can pay me half of what they're paying their current CEO. One of the first things I'd do is hire an outside law firm to come in and do a prostate exam level review of all recent mass layoffs, and if there's even a whiff of something illegal having gone on, anyone involved who was still around would be escorted out of the building by security after being relieved of their access badge immediately. Then, if IBM still gets sued for age discrimination, at least they're saving money on my salary.
Third, it seems the old adage about no one ever getting fired for choosing IBM only applies if you're an IBM customer. Choosing IBM as your employer seems to be a very different story.
Current IBM'er here. Normally I would never adovcate replacing people with AI, but in this case it would be a vast improvement. These HR IBM polyps can never answer a question, are utterly helpless if there's not a detailed script on how to proceeed, and are incapable of recruiting people into the right position. Karma has finally caught up with them.
I know personally and worked with these amazing IBM employees for years. These ladies were outstanding and excellent professionals in Human Resources. It saddened me so to hear about what happened to them by IBM, the company that I loved and respected for many years. IBM is not the same company any longer and hasn't been for a while on their treatment of their best employees. It starts at the top and the leadership is accountable for their bad business decisions.
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