Ex IBM sales manager, fired after battling discrimination against subordinates, wins $11m lawsuit On Thursday, a federal jury in Seattle, Washington, found that former IBM sales manager Scott Kingston had been unlawfully fired by the company and denied sales commission after challenging the treatment of subordinates as racially biased. And it awarded him $11.1m. The case dates back to 2017 when two IBM sales people within …
"The company will consider all of its options on appeal."
A good option is to realise you lost & are going to continue losing and issue a statement that it was all down to a former manager who is no longer with the business. After all,the number of people no longer with IBM's business makes it entirely credible.
But I think that former manager still gets a hefty consultancy fee for very little work, according to a Register story about her not so long ago.
As long as the C-suite benefits don't get impacted, screw the little people.
Just like those other dinosaurs who couldn't adjust to a mere meteor strike.
Or the current group of climate deniers who won't change their policies to try to keep the planet alive.
No really so. One or more unnamed people within IBM fired him. These people should be named by the court and penalised for what they did.
Unless these people (and their managers all the way up to the top) are penalised heavily then this bad behaviour will continue at IBM and elsewhere.
No, you don't understand. IBM doesn't condone it, but it will discriminate every time it thinks it helps its bottom line.
Which is, increasingly, not all that often.
Not to worry. When IBM's beancounters come up with the figures and finally say "um, we think this behavior is detrimental to our benefits", then things will change.
Until then, go lawsuits !
There is no doubt a backstory but the evidence looks pretty damning. The first story that came to mind was the horrific stories of sexual harassment and racial discrimination at Mitsubishi's US auto operations in the 1980's and 1990's. As a result of the lawsuits and the huge negative publicity Mitsubishi went from being the fastest growling and most successful new marque in the US market into dead and buried within a decade.
By this stage IBM is little more than a rotting carcass. Lets just take the mother' out the back of the woodshed and shoot it. For everyones sake.
Sounds remarkably like today's stories abut the Church of England. In as much as it's not simply the discrimination, but the blatant, open, unapologetic (until caught at least), visible discrimination. As if even the social filter that stops people openly behaving in the racist way they might want to has been removed.
"...We are disappointed by the jury's verdict," IBM said in a statement emailed to The Register.
We were expecting, maybe, that they would be elated at the verdict? [that particular scenario would not have been a surprise either, given how brain-dead IBM has become]
This statement was, of course, generated by the same simian-IQ legal division which can't keep IBM out of trouble when it comes to any form of discrimination or harassment. What a bunch of a**holes.
"We are proud of our client, Scott Kingston, for standing up for what’s right,” said Matthew E. Lee, an attorney with Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the law firm representing Kingston, in a statement. “He deserved justice and, after three long years, this verdict has given him that and a nice new Mercedes for us”
Fixed that for you...
Who makes the decisions about what bonus is paid. It seems from cases reported here that it is down to a single person - usually a manager who is direct involved. The chances of unfair discrimination are really high. Surely these decisions* should go to a committee of people with no skin in the game.
*at least above a certain level.
If they had a committee then it would be harder to say it wasnt company policy.
Also, big egos dont work well with otjers, so discard that.
BTW, this reminds me of a friend who got sacked after a huge sale that took him almost two years.
He got fired after the sale.. so he could not get the bonus.
Logic behind the firing "it would take years for him to close another important sale and he is expensive".
The chances of unfair discrimination are really high. Surely these decisions* should go to a committee of people with no skin in the game.
I thought all IBM employees were grey. Case seems a bit odd, ie white gets paid $1m, black doesn't. Manager fired for overpaying the white guy, and manager wins $11m.
So was there real discrimination, or not? Case seems to be based on retaliation and unfair dismissal, with some undertones of racism. But I've not read the verdict yet.
I do think there could be some merit in an internal appeals/dispute committee that tries to be as blind as possible. So Employee A and Employee B, no names, no ages, everything gender neutral so just the facts. Which I guess would be easier to do in a large company where employees & committee never meet, but there'd still be a chance committee members could find/figure out. But then fire those members, because why would they go looking for factors that could then discriminate against the employee.
Seems like it should work for things like commission & pay disputes, ie here's contract A and contract B. Similar sized deals, one attracted $1m commission, the other didn't.
Why?
And other than having access to both employee's commission plans, there'd be no need to really know anything more about the salesperson.
The most sickening thing is that white employees on the east coast that sold their a$$es off, did NOT get their much deserved commissions. They open doored and were told that IBM capped commissions at $10-20K. It's BS! Some should have gotten a million dollars, because of all they sold to pay Rometty, Gherson (the dinobaby scandal queens- Ginni's words: "I love the energy" when that mysterious male employee called older workers dinobabies and Rometty and Gherson called the maternal force troubling). Rometty was 55 when she took the CEO job and left at 65 in 2020 (forced out bc of the landslide of lawsuits - who puts things in writing? And she was the CEO?). She's on every board imaginable still raking in her 30mil plus bucks/yr! Her husband is in private equity so they have more money than they need while everyone else is being laid off and struggling to find work and to keep their homes. But instead, they are losing homes, burning through 401K and pension to stay afloat bc they can't find work, and families. are falling apart. In one case, an employee took his life after searching for work for over a year. Gherson is now teaching at Harvard Bus School (the irony!). So when white people open door about commissions, they don't get the money and instead get put on a list for layoff. There are some in the unprotected class (older white men) being laid off by black female managers. These white people can't sue for racism, because they would be accused of being a racist. The world is upside down. However, there are so many black females at IBM with great white male bosses (by their own admission), that say that if IBM ever lays them off for age, they'd sue for racism and sexism. It is so frustrating that they have rights but white people within the company don't.
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