Discrimination against older employees: IBM managers wanted to get rid of “dino babies”.

Internal e-mails show how discriminatory IBM executives have spoken about older employees – in order to get rid of them. The IT group distances itself from such practices. But apparently they have a method.

If it had been about sexual or racial discrimination, there would have been an outcry, says attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan. How the IT group IBM expresses itself about older employees is just shocking. According to the employment lawyer, she has never experienced anything like this in her entire career: “Direct statements from top executives who openly make fun of older employees. They call them ‘Dino Babies’, which at IBM have become an ‘extinct species’. should be,” says Liss-Riordan.

And it goes on: The “obsolete maternal workers” are “not digital natives”. They are “a real threat” to the company. This is what executives at the company are said to have said in emails about the employees. An attitude that Liss-Riordan knows. The lawyer represents more than 1000 former IBM employees. “IBM has practiced systemic age discrimination,” she says. “Their goal was to lay off older employees in order to replace them with younger ones.”

Of course, this is not obvious. The company offers the elderly to keep their job if they change the location. “And some of the emails that we found that have now been made public confirm that this move was actually an attempt to throw people out without giving the impression that they’re going to be fired,” Liss-Riordan said.

Group refers to constant average age

IBM is known for such practices. The company, which is headquartered in New York State, denies this. Head of HR Nickle LaMoreaux distanced himself from the emails in a statement. Discrimination is not part of the corporate culture. The average age of the IBM workforce in the United States remained constant at 48 between 2010 and 2020.

Lawyer Liss-Riordan also has other information: “We have evidence that IBM was looking very specifically at 20-30 year olds. Millennials, which they referred to with code names like ‘early professionals’. Young people who just come out of college.”

The supervisory authority also sees age discrimination at IBM

The national supervisory authority for equal opportunities accuses IBM of targeted age discrimination in a report. An anti-discrimination law should protect older workers from being fired, says Raymond Peeler from the agency. “Unlike in Europe, there is no retirement age here in the USA – apart from a few security-related professions,” he explains. “No one can be forced to quit their job because of age.”

Nevertheless, Michael North from New York University speaks of great tensions between the generations. They are not only growing in the USA, but also in Europe, says the expert on age discrimination in the world of work. The tech industry is particularly affected. “In Silicon Valley, people are particularly nervous. They don’t want to look old,” says North. “Because the pace is particularly high here, they fear that they will be left behind.”

Officially no age query for applications

Some people start plastic surgery in their 20s to avoid aging, North says. Officially it doesn’t exist. When you apply in the USA, you are not even asked about your year of birth – unlike in Germany. “You still have to put in the year you graduated from college. And then it’s not hard to do the math,” says North.

This is exactly why IBM had to answer to the court for age discrimination in 2014. In a job advertisement, the group was looking for applicants with a degree from 2010 or later.