IBM filed a lawsuit for age discrimination by a lawyer who targeted Uber, Google – The Mercury News

Shannon Liss-Riordan was compared to "a pit bull with a chihuahua in her mouth". In a nearly 20-year career, the Boston-based lawyer sued companies that harmed consumers or their own employees. She has represented workers against Amazon, Uber and Google and has presented her firm as the ultimate champion of employees left behind by powerful technology companies.

Now, Liss-Riordan, 49, is looking for International Business Machines.

On Monday, she filed a class action suit on behalf of three former IBM employees, who said the technology giant had discriminated against them because of their age when they were fired. "In recent years, IBM has systematically laid off older employees to build a younger workforce," said former employees.

Over the past decade, IBM has fired thousands of people in the United States, Canada and other high-wage countries to reduce costs A new generation of technology giants has surpassed size of the company in terms of size, turnover and prestige, and Big Blue pushes to return to the game.

The wave of layoffs has spawned a legion of disgruntled former employees who gather online to present grievances and share stories. For them, layoffs are a mockery of the values ​​they have enrolled in by joining the company. IBM argued that changing its workforce is necessary to remain competitive.

"Changes in our people are about skills, not age," IBM spokesperson Ed Barbini said in an email. "In fact, since 2010, there is no difference in the age of our American staff, but the skill profile of our employees has changed dramatically. That's why we have continued and will continue to invest heavily in employee skills and retraining so that we can all succeed in this new technological era. "

But society is under increasing pressure to change its behavior. In March, ProPublica issued a damning report arguing that IBM systematically violates age-based discrimination rules. Meanwhile, the Commission for Equal Employment Opportunity has consolidated complaints against IBM into one targeted investigation, according to one familiar to him. A spokeswoman for the EEOC declined to comment.

Liss-Riordan, a partner of Lichten & Liss-Riordan in Boston, expects many former IBM employees to join his trial. "There is a lot to be done for IBM," Liss-Riordan explains in an interview. "It will be among the thousands of people who will be affected. We believe that IBM should pay these employees.

If successful, IBM could be causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and could damage its reputation as a company once known to be one of the most caring employers in the world. world.

IBM is hardly the only big company to have fired people in a reinvention effort. General Electric cut thousands of workers and sold entire business units. But in a departure, IBM stopped disclosing the number of people cut in the United States or the number of its employees. The company says it is still recruiting, but there is no indication of how many of these open slots are filled each year.

In interviews, more than a dozen recently dismissed employees said that almost constant layoffs created an atmosphere of confusion and fear in many parts of the business, particularly for older employees who felt that they were the most likely to be fired. Former directors said that much of their time was spent determining who to let go next. Other workers talk about constantly reading tea leaves, exchanging rumors about the next division and attempting to transfer to a more advantaged group in time to avoid getting cut.

For most of the past two decades, Belinda Kromer's life has revolved around her work at IBM. She has crisscrossed the southwestern United States selling mainframes, the riddles that have been decisive for IBM's success for decades. For the single mother, spending half of her time on the road was not easy, but the work paid off and helped her son continue his education. Kromer, who was shooting about $ 115,000 a year, not counting the bonuses, was planning to work until he was 70 years old. But last year, IBM fired Kromer. His father had died a week earlier. Kromer says she had just received a rave review from her manager but that her skills were no longer relevant. Now 65 years old and attached to the small town of Texas where she owns a home and still supports her son, she struggles with her new status ("Getting up in the morning and not connecting to your computer is a strange thing if you did it for 17 years ") and has trouble finding work.

In August, she applied for a job in retail at her local Lowes store. "They told me I was overqualified."

Kromer will not participate in the trial. She is one of thousands of employees who gave up their right to sue; Kromer made it to get a 401 (k) match for his last year of employment. Workers generally agree not to sue IBM for age discrimination, either individually or in class actions. It is a common policy in American companies and a policy that was recently affirmed in a May 2018 Supreme Court decision.

But over time, IBM has reduced the amount of compensation it provides to one month in most cases, say former employees interviewed for this story, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions. For some, the offer was so inconsequential that they decided to leave the money on the table and retain their right to sue later. These are the people Liss-Riordan relies on. "IBM offered people a very, very stingy compensation," she says. "We expect a lot of others do not think that's enough."

Edvin Rusis is one of those people. He joined IBM in 2003 when he acquired Rational Software ($ 2.1 billion), where he was working at the time. The first shots came a year later, but he held firm. The work of his department seemed to be in great demand and Rusis, now 59, was not ready to retire. However, in March 2018, the fire engine found it. Officials refused to give him a reason, other than to mention that his skills were not up to date, says Rusis.

"When I received the notice, I was very bitterly shocked to find that it was a month and that they even asked me to give up all my rights," he recalls. Rissis initially filed a lawsuit against IBM with the EEOC, but withdrew it to sue the company instead, Liss-Riordan says.

Liss-Riordan is a formidable lawyer, but the case for which her firm is the best known was not a final victory. A large-scale campaign to have Uber recognize drivers as employees resulted in an initial settlement of $ 100 million, but was later blocked by a federal judge. Liss-Riordan is still suing Uber, including taking legal action against co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp.