IBM Reportedly Laid of Thousands of Older Workers

From Popular Mechanics

IBM is a giant of computing history, having played a crucial role in the advent of the personal computer and designing what is objectively the best keyboard ever made. But as the monolithic company has been throwing its weight behind the Watson project, it may have been doing something much less laudable behind the scenes. According to a joint report by Mother Jones and ProPublica, IBM has been targeting older workers in a series of discriminatory and potentially illegal layoffs.

According to the in-depth report, IBM has laid off some 20,000 employees aged 40 years and up, with older and more senior employees making up 60 percent of cuts overall. Moreover, the investigation found, the move was apparently intentional, explicitly referenced in internal documents that made note of attempts to "correct seniority mix" and referring to more senior employees as "gray hairs" and "old heads" in training documentation.

From the report:

This sort of discrimination, ProPublica notes, has been illegal since the 1950s with the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which originally limited the acceptable bounds of age discrimination to matters of physical fitness though protects have come under fire through court case in the following years.

You can read the exhaustive report here.

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