Age Discrimination

IBM is the target of a new age-discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of three employees.

“Over the last several years, IBM has been in the process of systematically laying off older employees in order to build a younger workforce,” those employees insisted in the suit, which was filed by Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney known for suing Uber, Amazon, and other tech giants.

Nonetheless, the lawsuit comes at a sensitive time for IBM, which faces at least one other lawsuit related to the termination of older workers. Fueling the legal fire is a much-circulated report issued earlier this year by ProPublica and Mother Jones, which suggests that, over the past five years, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 jobs held by American employees aged 40 and over, “about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts.”

IBM isn’t the only tech giant facing age-discrimination action. As of May 2018, Intel was reportedly in the crosshairs of the EEOC over targeting older employees for dismissal. When the news of that investigation first broke, an Intel spokesperson insisted that any layoffs were “based solely upon skills sets and business needs.”

Even job postings risk discriminating against older workers. In May, a lawsuit filed by the Communications Workers of America claimed that Facebook is filtering job ads to a younger crowd, violating fair employment laws in the process. “When Facebook’s own algorithm disproportionately directs ads to younger workers at the exclusion of older workers, Facebook and the advertisers who are using Facebook as an agent to send their advertisements are engaging in disparate treatment,” read the lawsuit filing. (The ACLU later filed its own action.)

Ageism remains a huge problem in the tech industry in general. Some 68 percent of Baby Boomers said they’re discouraged from applying for jobs due to age. Around 40 percent of those who belong to Generation X felt ageism is affecting their ability to earn a living. And 29 percent said they’ve “experienced or witnessed” ageism in their current workplace or their most recent employer.