IBM HR chief rejects claims of age discrimination
IBM's head of HR rejects claims that there is a culture of age discrimination, despite documents to the contrary seen this week
Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resources officer at IBM, sent an open letter to IBM employees on Sunday refuting "false claims" that the company engaged in systemic age discrimination.
"Discrimination of any kind is entirely against our culture and who we are at IBM, and there was (and is) no systemic age discrimination at our company," LaMoreaux said in a statement published on the company's website.
LaMoreaux used corporate data from 2010 to 2020 to show that the firm does not discriminate against people of a certain age.
In that time IBM shut down entire lines of business and "reinvented itself for a new era of technology".
"Amidst those significant changes, IBM never engaged in systemic age discrimination, which data confirms," LaMoreaux said.
Between 2010 and 2020, 37 per cent of all IBM hires in the United States were above the age of 40. Over 10,000 people recruited in the USA during the period were over the age of 50, while 1,500 were above 60.
According to LaMoreaux, 26 per cent of IBM's US employees had worked with the company for 20 years or more, as of 2020. At that time, the median age of IBM's US workforce was 48: the same as it had been in 2010.
She emphasised that IBM's workforce strategy has always been guided by one core principle, which is "having the right skills at the right levels in the right jobs" to assist clients.
"It has never been driven by the age of any individual or group of employees," LaMoreaux added.
The remark by LaMoreaux are an attempt to separate the company's values from the individual behaviour of some top executives, who have been accused of using insulting terms such as "dinobabies" to describe older employees. There are also claims that the executives discussed plans to replace employees with younger workers, as revealed by internal IBM documents made public by a US District Court last week.
The documents were released in an age discrimination lawsuit - Lohnn v. IBM - brought against the blue-chip technology firm.
The initial complaint was filed last year on behalf of Jorgen Lohnn, who worked for IBM as a Client Executive for Sales and Distribution and committed suicide after being laid off in 2016.
The suit, filed by Lohnn's widow Denise and seen by The Register says: 'Lohnn worked for IBM for approximately 15 years until his layoff in 2016 at the age of 57'.
'Plaintiff [Denise Lohnn] contends that her husband, Mr Lohnn, fell victim to a years-long companywide discriminatory scheme implemented by IBM's top management to build a younger workforce, by reducing its population of older workers in order to make room for the hiring of younger workers.'
The internal emails made public last week suggest that IBM executives wanted to make older staff 'extinct' to lower the company's average age. They were unhappy over the fact that the company had a smaller percentage of millennials in its staff and vowed to move against its 'dated maternal workforce'.
The document describes an IBM plan to force the senior staff to voluntarily retire by transferring them to undesirable places. The executives believed that the majority of such workers would refuse to relocate.
IBM is facing similar age discrimination complaints in arbitration and court proceedings by many ex-employees across the USA.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents hundreds of former IBM employees in similar claims, told the New York Times that these documents show that senior IBM officials were actively conspiring to displace older workers.
Liss-Riordan is seeking class-action status for some of the claims, although courts have yet to certify the class.