IBM Class Action Lawsuit Says Company Fires Older Employees

Three former workers have initiated an age bias collective and class action lawsuit against IBM due to their claims that younger employees replaced them and that these tactics are part of an ongoing strategy of the computer giant.

The IBM age bias class action lawsuit was initiated in a New York federal court recently and includes claims from all three workers that they were fired in order to make way for younger employees.

The named plaintiffs in the IBM class action include Edvin Rusis, Henry Gerrits, and Phil McGonegal.

The IBM employee class action lawsuit claims that the company had an ongoing policy started in 2012 to remove older workers and to hire replacement staffers born after 1980, which is a form of alleged age discrimination.

All three of the workers who filed the IBM age bias class action lawsuit say that they had been working at the company for a long period of time prior to their termination and that they were all let go at the end of June.

The IBM job class action includes allegations that numerous older employees have been affected by this policy. The IBM age discrimination class action argues, in fact, that a minimum of 20,000 workers over the age of 40 were let go in order to make way for younger employees.

According to the IBM class action, the company previously released details about the ages of employees when a worker was laid off.

However, the plaintiffs in this IBM age bias class action lawsuit say that this practice stopped in 2014, an effort the fired workers believe is part of an ongoing plan to conceal information about age discrimination.

Rather than receiving a data sheet about the ages of workers inside the individual business units, which came standard with severance packages, terminated workers are now required to sign a binding arbitration agreement, according to the terminated employees.

All three of the plaintiffs who initiated the IBM age discrimination class action say they turned down that severance agreement due to the binding arbitration contract requirement.

The IBM class action lawsuit alleges that many other older employees who have been let go have also turned down that severance agreement and its associated requirements.

An investigation completed by ProPublica in March identified that around 60 percent of the employees laid off by IBM in the last five years are workers age 40 and above, according to the lawsuit.

The IBM age bias class action lawsuit seeks to generate a national collective of affected employees through the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in addition to a North Carolina Class through the North Carolina Equal Employment Practices Act and a California Class through the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

Affected employees could include those who were terminated by IBM due to being over the age of 40 in order to make room for younger employees.

The employees are represented by Shannon Liss-Riordan and Thomas Fowler of Lichten & Liss-Riordan PC.

The IBM Age Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit is Rusis v. International Business Machines Corp., Case No. 1:18-cv-08434, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.