imagine it's 1980 mullets are cool the
Empire Strikes Back is playing in
theatres and International Business
Machines or IBM is the world's dominant
technology firm it embodies the American
Dream with a progressive agenda of equal
opportunity and prides itself on a
stable workforce it's so thrilling to
see the new IBM personal system - in the
hands of an old master according to this
handbook in over 40 years full-time
employees haven't been touched by
layoffs people are a treasured resource
and are treated like one fast forward to
the present
ProPublica estimates iBM has eliminated
20,000 American employees age 40 and
over in just the past five years that's
about 60 percent of its estimated US job
cuts during that time how did I BM go
from valuing its older workforce to
systematically getting rid of them I
worked for IBM for 15 years and 42 years
old I work at IBM for 18 years hi
reading the culture there is now that
everybody has a target on their back
because what they said they were through
the 80s technology started shifting
rapidly among other things Apple
introduced the first Macintosh and took
a direct shot at IBM it appears IBM
wants it all by the early 2000s IBM fell
further as new rivals like Google
Facebook and Amazon took the lead in our
world the speed and tempo of modern
living are increasing at an
ever-accelerating rate and as it slipped
IBM had to deal with something most of
these competitors didn't have a large
number of experienced and aging
employees they reacted to new setbacks
with layoffs and many of them were older
workers
publica heard from over 1,400 former IBM
employees my name is Brian Miller my
name is Joe Malin a garland really ruin
my career I'm never going to probably
get afraid unable to move across the
country I'm when I when I read through
those papers I did not think I was
giving my betrayal here's what we know
in making staff cuts iBM has sidestepped
US laws and regulations intended to
protect workers from age discrimination
in the past they would get two lists
from IBM one that had ages of people
staying and another with ages of those
being let go in 2014
IBM stopped giving that information on
top of that the company required people
to sign away their rights to sue for age
discrimination in court in exchange for
their severance packages by signing the
documents laid off employees waived the
right to go to court they could only
pursue their age cases through
confidential arbitration they also have
to do it solo so they couldn't combine
forces with other workers who may be
claiming similar age discrimination
studies show arbitration overwhelmingly
favors employers workers win only
nineteen percent of the time when their
cases are arbitrated versus thirty six
percent of the time when they go to
federal court and 57 percent in state
courts iBM has also laid off and fired
some older workers with review
techniques that effectively made their
age a disadvantage take the case of one
business unit that was using a point
system to evaluate workers the more
points a person got the more protected
they were from negative changes to
employment but the system itself
appeared biased employees were given
points for being relatively new at a job
level so those who worked there fewer
years earned more points than long time
IBM erst
the bias against older workers is
evident when you compare the number of
points to years of service those with no
points worked there an average of more
than thirty years those with higher
points average
fifteen years but the numbers don't
reflect worker skills 8% of older more
long-term employees the ones with lower
points were rated by the company itself
as good enough to stay at current job
levels or be promoted while only a small
percentage of younger employees with
high numbers had similar ratings
they've also converted many layoffs into
retirements forcing ex employees to
accept a retirement package or leave
with no benefits they've told remote
workers including older ones who had
worked from home for years to relocate
to offices potentially thousands of
miles away from their homes their
options were relocate or resign in
response to all of these findings iBM
has said we are proud of our company and
our employees ability to reinvent
themselves era after era while always
complying with the law the problem is
protection for workers under the law is
eroding in the past few decades rulings
and age discrimination cases have said
former employees must prove that there
were no factors other than age involved
in their job changes but companies like
IBM have made it near impossible to
prove that with nearly 400,000 employees
worldwide iBM is still a tech giant and
how it handles its older workforce could
encourage other companies to follow suit
even though a lot of these companies
have a younger workforce now here's the
thing about aging it happens to everyone
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