IBM Comes Under Age Discrimination Radar

The International Business Machines Corporation, better known by its abbreviation IBM, has been building computers for about 70 years and can certainly be seen as a dinosaur. But age also plays a major role internally, but not necessarily in a good way. IBM is certainly a legend in the computer business, no other company is as closely associated with the history of this division as “Big Blue”.

Over the past few years, IBM has consistently and consistently tried to rejuvenate itself, and this has created a lot of tension within the company. Yes, more than that: a recent report from the New York Times (through t3n) reveals numerous details about age discrimination lawsuits. In concrete terms, this concerns bullying of older employees, who have to disgust the company with partly unfair methods.

extinct species

And these are not isolated cases, as the New York Times found in internal documents. IBM executives are said to have been directly involved in plans to evict older workers – dubbed “dino babies,” belonging to an “extinct species” – from the company. The reason for this is that IBM still has a relatively small share of millennials. According to current lawsuits, Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer assigned to the case, said: “These files show that senior IBM executives colluded specifically to expel older employees from IBM’s workforce, to make way for millennials.” She represents hundreds of former IBM employees in such age discrimination cases.

IBM rejects these allegations, saying there is no such systematic discrimination: “The employees were segregated because of changes in business conditions and the demand for certain qualifications, not because of their age.” The documents that have now been published, however, show the contrary, because they explicitly state that the child was referred to by his name.