IBM is being sued by a group of its former employees for allegedly laying them off for their age. They alleged that the tech company violated the law that states it should reveal the ages of people they fired who are 40 years old and above.
The suit was filed in New York City federal district court and the plaintiffs, four former IBM employees, assigned a class-action law firm that is known for winning most of its big cases, to represent them. As per Law Litigation Daily, the staff, whose ages are over 55, sued the company for a suspected massive scheme to conceal discriminatory firing of more than 20,000 older staff in violation of disclosure requirements.
The lawyers of the complainants added that their main case against IBM would be a major age-discrimination lawsuit. They said that top executives of the company "took the calculated risk of openly breaking the law" in order to cover up substantial, targeted layoffs of its older workers.
With regards to the charges, IBM stated that it is not worried about the complaint at all. The firm's spokesman told Business Insider, "The plaintiff's theories have been rejected by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. We are confident that our arbitration clauses are legal and appropriate."
This age discrimination in IBM is actually not new. This is not the first time that the company has been accused of terminating older workers. In fact, several investigations have already been carried out against the company but they often ended up with no concrete results.
At any rate, through the lawsuit, the fired employees are seeking damages for the age-discrimination practices of IBM that forced them to leave their job.
"I did my job very well and received glowing remarks on my annual evaluations for 33 years," Cheryl Witmer, one of the complainants in the case said via her lawyer's press release. She also disclosed that she was terminated from her post in 2016 at the age of 57.
"Suddenly in my 34th year, I was unfairly downgraded in my annual evaluation," she said. "Nothing about my work changed - what changed is that IBM decided to replace me with a much younger worker."
It should be noted that his lawsuit is different from the case that some IBM employees filed last year. It was also an age discrimination lawsuit but that was filed by employees who did not sign a waiver that prohibits them from suing collectively to get their severance pay.
