Re: @Beep54 Too technical
If IBM wants you gone... they will invent excuses for you to be gone.
This is how things appear on the surface, at least to me. Let's hope a proper discovery process reveals the truth, as well as "how deep the rabbit hole goes". If it's a really deep hole, expect IBM to "settle".
Hopefully these are isolated cases [large companies can have lots of isolated cases]. Systemic age discrimination wouldn't surprise me, however.
I bet that one woman who took the family leave went her entire time without using any of her benefits with respect to emergency leave, etc.. It's like having YOUR insurance rates increased for just being in a not-at-fault accident. Because if she HAD abused emergency leave policies, that would have been listed as a reason for termination.