International Business Machines (IBM) is in hot water for axing as many as a hundred thousand workers as part of the company's age-discrimination aimed at getting rid of the old and giving way to the young.
The "fire-and-hire scheme" is a major facelift IBM is undergoing to appeal to the masses as a "trendy organization" and keep with the times. However, this comes at a cost.
The technology giant is facing several charges, including a class-action suit in New York in addition to civil and individual cases filed in Texas, Pennsylvania, and California in 2018.
In a statement, the company said it hires 50,000 employees every year, and that it has reinvented its image in the last 5 years to target "high-value opportunities for clients."
The allegations recorded in court documents in an age-discrimination class suit that the company is facing was filed by Jonathan Langley, an IBM former program director for global systems and head of sales for its Bluemix division, after being terminated in 2017 when he was 59 years old.
The tech company has filed a petition to junk the lawsuit, and on Wednesday Langley's legal counsel filed a motion to oppose IBM's petition.
The move included a deposition from erstwhile IBM human resources vice president Alan Wild, who disclosed that the company has dismissed 50,000 to 100,000 staff in the last several years, while hiring new ones at the same time, a court document in Texas revealed.
Based on court records, Wild stated that IBM had carried out a ploy to solve its workforce hiring issues by showing millennials that it was not "an old fuddy-duddy organization" and restructuring itself "as a cool, trendy" company like Apple, Amazon, and Google.
According to the class-action suit, IBM started its process to "correct seniority mix" in 2014, and later on started terminating aging workers and replacing them with young ones who, the company's Consultancy Division disclosed are "much more innovative and receptive to technology than baby boomers."
A few weeks ago, IBM laid off around 2,000 personnel as they continue to re-align with focus on the higher-value segments of the info-tech market as the company ramps up its recruitment in critical new areas," IBM bared.
In 2015, an IBM spokesperson denied reports that it would be giving the pink slip to 100,000 workers in the coming years, junking these claims as "baseless" and "ridiculous".
