IBM and its spin-off IT infrastructure provider Kyndryl are being sued for age discrimination.
Five senior executives from both companies brought forward the complaint, which accuses the tech firms of discontinuing roles for older employees while advertising positions for younger applicants.
Amongst the four IBM plaintiffs are the company’s former CEO of Events and VP of Client Experience, with the one Kyndryl accuser having previously been employed as the organization’s Services Account Manager.
The complaint is the latest in a series of accusations leveled at both companies, with it being reported last month that Kyndryl had been accused of discriminating against employees based on age, race, and disability.
Indeed, IBM's initial issues date back to the 2010s, with a 2021 legal filing claiming that a number of former employees had been discriminated against during the previous decade and that the company was trying "to keep ageist IBM executive-level planning documents confidential."
In a rebuttal of the allegations published on the company’s website in February 2022, Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s Chief Human Resources Officer, stated that “there was (and is) no systemic age discrimination at our company.
IBM's workforce strategy has always been shaped by one core principle: having the right skills at the right levels in the right jobs to support our clients. It has never been driven by the age of any individual or group of employees.
So, let’s take a closer look at precisely how the companies are being accused of intentionally discriminating against older employees.
The Complaint
The official complaint states that IBM executives devised a plan to replace older workers with younger ones, utilizing the HR and Finance departments to implement it.
They used AI and scoring algorithms to target older employees for layoffs, with the Finance department providing the rationale for these mass exits. IBM allegedly employed biased predictive analytics to identify older workers for dismissal, despite knowing it was against anti-discrimination laws.
To cover up their actions, IBM Legal supposedly spent significant resources on tactics to avoid detection. They used coded language in corporate documents, such as "Early Professional Hire," "skills remix," and "transformation," to disguise their intentions.
The lawsuit claims that layoffs, called "Resource Actions," were strategically aimed at older workers, who were given unattainable performance goals to justify poor reviews and terminations.
These decisions were pre-approved by HR, with first-line managers being used to mask the true source of the termination decisions.
Additionally, IBM is accused of hiding the replacement of older workers with younger ones by changing job titles and restructuring the organization to make it seem like positions were eliminated, rather than simply replacing older employees.