In 2020, the median age of IBM’s US workforce was 48, up from in 2010.
IBM executives discussed in email how to coerce older workers and ridicule them as “dinobabies” to be made an “extinct species,” according to a court filing in an age discrimination case against the company. needed.
According to the filing Friday, communications show “extremely outrageous animosity” by executives against older employees, who were in the company’s “highest ranks” at the time.
The partially amended filing says the emails surfaced in separate arbitration proceedings, but it does not reveal the identities of the company’s executives or indicate when they were speaking. A judge has ordered the release of versions of the underlying documents.
In an email series, an International Business Machines Corp. executive described plans to accelerate change and convert them into “extinct species” by inviting them to release “dinobabies” (new species), according to filings with company officials. also complained about IBM’s “dated maternal workforce” that “must change,” and discussed the disappointment that IBM had a much smaller share of millennials in its workforce than a competitor, but stated that as of the filing. Accordingly, its share will increase after the layoffs.
An IBM spokesperson said in a statement that the company never engaged in systematic age discrimination and that it fired employees not because of their age but because of changing business conditions. According to the statement, in 2020, the median age of IBM’s US workforce was 48, up from 2010.
The spokesperson also said that the language quoted in the email is “not consistent with IBM’s respect for its employees and, as the facts clearly show, it does not reflect company practices or policies.”
The company faces complaints of age bias in arbitration and court proceedings by former employees across the country. A former IBM vice president of human resources said in a case-court statement that the company faced talent recruitment problems and set out a way to show millennials that IBM was not “an old stupid organization”, making itself “appearing as Was” [a] Cool, modern outfit.”
Friday’s filing was submitted by Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who represents hundreds of workers suing the company.
“IBM engages in massive age discrimination,” Liss-Riordan said in an interview Friday. “IBM has tried to use the arbitration clause to protect that evidence from the public and other employees who are trying to make up their cases of discrimination.”
The case is in Lohnn v. International Business Machines Corp., 21-cv-06379, US District Court, Southern District of New York.
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