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June 21, 2024 01:50 am

IBM, Kyndryl Sued For Age Discrimination By Its Own VPs

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Once again, IBM has been sued for age discrimination, this time alongside spin-off Kyndryl, for allegedly cutting the jobs of older workers while creating similar positions for younger ones. The complaint [PDF] was filed on Tuesday in New York City, on behalf of five veteran executives and employees who collectively served the two corporations for more than 150 years. The IBM plaintiffs include: Michael Nolan, former Director of Strategy and Planning for IBM's Software Unit; Karla Bousquet, former VP, CEO of Events at IBM, Karla; Jay Zeltzer, former Business Automation Leader; and Teresa Cook, former VP of Client Experience. Randall Blanchard, former Services Account manager, is suing Kyndryl, having previously been with Big Blue. Despite IBM chief global HR officer Nickel LaMoreaux's 2022 rejection of what she characterized as "false claims of systemic age discrimination," the lawsuit argues the mainframe titan is still targeting older workers. The legal filing cites a 2021 case, Townsley v. Int'l Bus. Machines Corp, in which executive Sam Ladah, who is accused of attempting "to keep ageist IBM executive level planning documents confidential," said those documents from five to six years earlier were still being used for hiring decisions. To further support the claim that the targeting of older workers continues to this day, the complaint says, "A recently leaked video of [CEO Arvind] Krishna confirms that IBM has continued its practice of using secretive top-down pressure to gerrymander its workforce to reflect the demographic preferences of its executives." The 2023 video, published by conservative political activist James O'Keefe, appears to show Krishna tying manager bonuses to diversity targets in a context where such targets are alleged to be discriminatory. Basically, IBM has been accused of threatening to withhold bonuses from bosses if they don't hire a diverse enough range of techies -- more Hispanic and Black people -- leading to qualified candidates -- Asian people and others -- being ignored on the basis of their race. The latest lawsuit also points to Wimbish v. IBM, an age discrimination complaint filed in September by two human resources managers. "In their complaint, these fired HR managers alleged that IBM's HR still constantly consider an employee's 'runway' when determining if that worker would be terminated," the complaint says. "'Runway' is coded language for how long IBM HR expects an employee to remain at IBM before they retire, a direct proxy for age."

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