Monday, April 12, 2021

Big Blue Boots Older Employees?

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention.

...the iconic technology company IBM is facing allegations it replaced thousands of older employees with what executives called "new collar workers," according to the latest episode of Sinclair's Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson....

...late last year the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gave a favorable ruling to older employees who claim they were wrongly fired by IBM....

How does IBM attempt to justify this?  Easy!!!

 ..."Our employment actions always have been based on having the right skills at the right levels in the right jobs — never on the age of any individual or group of employees," IBM said in a statement. ...

The trickery-and-deceit language is in red.  IBM, like the Intels, Googles, and India-based contracting firms, will DIS-qualify people based on "skills"--which really means 'they don't know this (XYZ) programming language.'  That's a red herring, as any skilled programmer can pick up a new language in short order.  But the second--"right levels"--complements the first; what Big Blue is saying is that they want to pay a lot less than their tenured staffers earn or they cannot compete with the foreign-labor importer/contractors. 

...A reported internal IBM strategic planning document, submitted as evidence in court, refers to "Re-profiling Current Talent." Under "Continuous talent refresh," it reads: "Focus on programs to create room for new talent to build skills for key growth areas..." Under "Expected Outcomes:" "55% Early Professional Hires in 2020" and "10% annual talent refresh."

Former top IBM executive Catherine Rodgers says that's code for replacing older workers with young ones. Her testimony is a key part of the case against IBM. She was fired in 2017 after 40 years — she says for warning her superiors that their hiring and firing strategies amounted to age discrimination. ...

Norm Matloff has been writing about this for years.  Like we said, it's not news if you've been paying attention.

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