The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces civil rights laws in workplace discrimination cases, recently determined that IBM exhibited a pattern of age discrimination in its layoff practices between 2013 and 2018.
The decision was revealed in an Aug. 31 letter sent to former IBM workers who brought the matter to the commission. ProPublica first reported on the existence of that letter.
In recent years, lawsuits had been filed by former employees in response to the computing giant's layoff trends, The News & Observer previously reported.
IBM, which has hundreds of thousands of employees across the world, has a significant presence in Research Triangle Park. The company has shed jobs in recent years as it focuses attention on its profitable business sectors, like cloud computing. Despite the layoffs, the company has always noted that it continues to aggressively hire.
Steve Groetzinger, a Triangle resident and former salesman for the company's Security Division, told The N&O in 2018 that the pattern with layoffs seemed clear. "When I looked around at all the people who've been laid off recently, there was a pattern," Groetzinger said. "Everybody was over 50."
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed with that assessment.
"The investigation uncovered top-down messaging from (IBM's) highest ranks directing managers to engage in an aggressive approach to significantly reduce the head count of older workers to make room for Early Professional Hires," Judy Keenan, the director of the EEOC's New York office, wrote.
"Analysis shows it was primarily older workers (85.85%) in the total potential pool of those considered for layoff," Keenan added. "Evidence uncovered older employees who were laid off and told that their skills were out of date, only to be brought back as contract workers, at a lower rate of pay with fewer benefits. EEOC received corroborating testimony from dozens of witnesses nationwide supporting a discriminatory animus based on age."
The letter reads that the EEOC's determination is final. The EEOC declined to comment on the letter, saying it was confidential.
The finding could lead to more lawsuits and settlements for IBM, ProPublica reported.
Edward Barbini, a spokesman for IBM, said in an email to The News & Observer that IBM was disappointed in the EEOC's findings. He also said IBM vowed to defend itself in the matter.
"IBM makes decisions based on the needs of its business units, not age, and we will continue to defend this matter vigorously," Barbini said. "To meet the dramatic industry changes of the past decade and the changing needs of our clients, IBM embarked on a major wave of transformation in 2013. In this process, we looked hard at our product portfolio, listened to our customers, and chose not to further invest in the products they didn't want.
"It has been imperative to have the skills needed for the new digital era, and the company aggressively hires from the outside as well as invests a half-billion dollars each year in employee training and re-skilling. 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."
Keenan wrote that since "there is reason to believe that violations have occurred," the EEOC expects IBM and the charging parties will enter into conciliation.
"A commission representative will contact each party in the near future to begin conciliation," she wrote. "If you decline to enter into conciliation discussions, or when the Commission's representative is unable to secure an acceptable conciliation agreement, the Director shall so inform the parties, advising them of the court enforcement alternatives available to aggrieved persons and the Commission."
Barbini declined to comment further on the topic.
