Inside IBMs Purge of Thousands of Workers Who Have One Thing in Common

[babylonsister]

Inside IBM’s Purge of Thousands of Workers Who Have One Thing in Common
“Age discrimination is an open secret like sexual harassment was.”

Peter Gosselin and Ariana Tobin
Mar. 22, 2018 6:00 AM
This story was published in partnership with ProPublica.


For nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.

As the world’s dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million US white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.

But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn’t have: a large number of experienced and aging US employees.

The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” It slashed IBM’s US workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its total US job cuts during those years.

In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked US laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

Among ProPublica‘s findings, IBM:

Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements.

Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/03/ibm-propublica-gray-hairs-old-heads/

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. They did the same to my husband......?

That was 1991 when he had passed his 25 years. Rather than fire him and deny him his full retirement,, they gave him an offer he could not refuse. Take an unpaid leave of absence and retire with 30 years. IBM followed thru with that, but reneged on Health Care benefits. Bridging 4 years was tough on us financially, but we got thru it. I was working 2 jobs, my husband did odd jobs and drove limousine for a local company, then drove Truck for a number of years.

Today, IBM is not the company it once was. The first Time clock IBM made is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The retirement check gets in the bank every month on time. That is a relief and the IRA continues to grow.

[forgotmylogin]

48. I've been at my same job for 14 years.

A couple of years ago they salary-capped us as an "incentive to move up in the company".

The actual story is they didn't want people making a career out of a decent "entry level" position and getting raises over the years up to sometimes $20/hr for the same exact job they could hire green kids out of high school for and start them at minimum wage.

So in some cases, it might be less "age discrimination" as much as "tenure discrimination".

Luckily my branch understands that veteran employees do our specifically weird complicated job better with experience, and only purged people who were close to getting fired via racked up absences or other issues.

It sucks that I haven't had a raise in 8 years, but the other advantages of this specific job and my homelife situation makes the rut I'm in somewhat worth it.

[FakeNoose]

63. I worked in a small company that didn't have promotion opportunities

I'm retired now since last year, but I made it to retirement at age 66, and I'm proud of that. I worked for a smallish company of about 60 full-time employees and I was there for over 20 years. Over the years many people were laid off, or left for other reasons but I was lucky and worked hard and kept my job.

Here's my secret: I worked in customer service (inside sales) and I had customers who counted on me and I didn't let them down. Communication with customers is the key, even when you have to give them bad news. (Like for example their order is shipping late or something similar.) It's much better when you give them good news, but I was loyal to my customers. The bosses were never going to lay us off who have customer contact because they wouldn't want customers to know if we had a bad quarter. The workers who got laid off were the shift workers who never spoke with customers and had no influence with the bosses. I know that sounds unfair, but that's the way it is.

Anyone with good communication skills and hoping for job security should look into customer service and call yourself an inside salesperson. Make yourself indispensible to the production manager and he/she will save your butt, over and over again. We did receive small cost-of-living raises, but the real "extra" incentive were the quarterly profit-sharing bonuses of up to $2,000 per quarter.

Unfortunately my advice is no help to older IBM workers.

[forgotmylogin]

64. We are CS as well.

I've lucked into a work at home job doing clerical work where I'm not on the phone, so the fact I can handle my IRL responsibilities and write *sort of* makes up for the capped salary.

I was also fortunate in that I slipped in right before they stopped providing pensions as well. It's not a lot, but it's nice to know that if I need to separate from the company for any reason, they pay that out to me. (The monthly amount I would receive after I would potentially retire is too insignificant to be worthwhile.)

[DiverDave]

70. I have driven a truck for 25 years

I have worked for lots of companies, a.lot.
There are drivers that stay for 20,25,30 years with the same company.
I have alot of experience with different types of trailers and all kinds of freight.
I have been with my current job for 3 years.
I got a 4% raise the first year, a .01% raise last year.
This year I may get nothing.
I may quit over this. I feel that loyalty and hard work should
Be rewarded. I live in my truck, and for 4-5 months. Some places work 7 days
a week. I do my job, sometimes in difficult situations.
I was told I am at the top pay rate.
I have the luxury of a strong job market.
The IBM guys didn't.
I spoke with several drivers that haven't had a raise for 8 years.
I strongly disagree with this.
Anyone looking for a job that pays crap the first year, but after
a year the pay is okay.
Pm me if you would have any truck driving questions.

[bronxiteforever]

2. Kick & recommend. This chilling quote from IBM

“We are proud of our company and our employees’ ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the law.”
Employees reinvent themselves! Corporate code for we continually screw workers knowing that they will have to take whatever we dish out.

[DrDan]

3. unfortunately IBM is not alone - many, if not most, corporations engage in similar practices

We can probably thank Jack Welch for starting these lack-of-compassion-for-employees trends back in in the '80's. On a positive note, he now has a personal wealth of $750M or so.

[NJCher]

29. colleges and universities, too

I am on the executive boards of both state and local unions and we see several community colleges in NJ that have done massive "layoffs" for older professors. Many are one-year contracts that are just not renewed and others are adjuncts. Makes it real easy for the administration. If they are tenured, the administration makes their job so difficult they flee to another college.

At the same time they are not being offered contracts, they are advertising for teachers on HERC and other college/university job boards.

The administrators, of course, are awarding themselves half-a-million a year contracts and yes, we unions have stormed board meetings to protest it. Most of the boards are headed up by tycoon businessmen, however, who think this way to operate is just ducky.

[DrDan]

36. adjuncts . . . low wages, no benefits, no security, no status

I was an adjunct for a couple of universities a few years back . . . the education of many, many students and the reputation of the University at stake - doesn't matter - the dollars rule

[NJCher]

54. it depends on the state

In our state we have good unions and are among the highest paid both K-12 and college adjuncts in the nation. However, for the latter there is no job protection, thus dumping them when they get older and their rate per college hour is high.

[appalachiablue]

35. "The Slasher" Jack Welch, head of GE who said he'd move a barge around

the world to use the cheapest workers, on MSNBC late 90s- early 2000s when GE owned NBC I think.

------

Brutal Social Darwinism at work- competition, greed, all of it.

[DrDan]

38. and many, many CEOs adopted his management style - his impact was felt far and wide

but the Boards love him and his cut-n-slash approach

[appalachiablue]

42. Those at the top benefitted plenty from Welch's mgmt. tactics I'm sure.

Real peach, that one. I recall seeing him on MSNBC some yrs. back w/ Chris M. who was of course highly respectful of The Chief.

[Red State Prisoner]

4. IBM

In the tech world, we always said it stood for I've Been Misled.

[Fritz Walter]

5. IBM: "I've Been Misled!"

It used to mean "I'm Being Moved."

[Farmer-Rick]

6. This was modus operandi for most corporation since the crash

Anyone over 40 looking for a job after having lost their last one in the crash, knew there was massive age discrimination. It was blatant, it was routine, it was devasting. It came at a time when there was very little economic opportunity and the added burden of discrimination because of your age destroyed families.

[groundloop]

19. And yet we're supposed to keep working longer and longer before retirement

The bastard repubs have upped the "retirement age" where we can draw social security and at the same time corporations are screwing us out of a chance to make a living. I'm currently a victim of this and wound up in a job I can't stand after being at the same company for over 15 years, all so that our corporations can make more money and send it to the 1%.

[Farmer-Rick]

24. Yeah it happened to my better half

Luckily I work for myself and have a military pension and medical care. So an extra pair of hands on the farm actually worked out for us. But it was a rough couple of years losing that 2nd income and building up the farm revenue to compensate.

[appalachiablue]

44. Got it, how are people to survive age 40-70, beyond? They Don't Care.

I was surprised a couple yrs. ago to see that in Europe, Germany of all places I think, some were pushing for age 69 retirement. In France too. Not rich? your problem and fault. Social Darwisnistic Free Market Capitalism run wild.

[MurrayDelph]

53. Five years ago

I was in Los Angeles on vacation, and got a phone call from a company in Portland, OR, that I had applied to a few months earlier. They had suddenly decided that they needed to see me that week. So I flew at my expense back to Oregon, caught a bus (several hours later) to my home town on the coast, and the next day got a haircut and drove back into Portland for the interview.

They took one look at the grey hair in my beard, and started asking question along the lines of "do you have experience with..." At this point I don't remember if I actually said out loud "If I did, it would have been on that resume you're holding."

I drove back to my home. The next morning, after my cell phone kept malfunctioning all night and I had to replace it before driving back to LA (I'm not driving 1100 miles in winter without a reliable phone), I bought a new phone and started driving back. I stopped for the night at a motel in Redding, CA (again at my own expense). The next morning, as I am driving back, the road conditions start announcing "Snow on the Grapevine." I'm not thrilled about driving in snow, but more afraid of being in snow surrounded by drivers who don't know how to handle rain. Just as I get to the bottom of the Grapevine, the signs change to announce that I5 is now closed.

I decide that losing three days of vacation time is enough (and I have tickets for Disneyland and the Doctor Who convention waiting for me in LA), so I'm going to have to double-back through Bakersfield to Mojave and come in on I-14. As I am gassing up at a Grapevine station, I get a form email letter from the company that I'd interviewed with thanking me for coming in, but they decided to go in a different direction.

And that's the moment I decided I was retired (at not-quite 60 years old).



Epilogue: About two years later, I got a call from a head-hunter who was trying to fix me up with that same company. I made sure she heard the whole story. I pointed out that by their behavior, not only did I not want to work there, but would never be a customer to their service.

[raccoon]

60. "They decided to go in a different direction"--

Those are the same words they used to my 60 year old sister when she didn't get a job.

[No Vested Interest]

72. Re:"Grey hair in my beard"- I began having my hair professionally colored

when job-hunting in my early 40's and being interviewed by HR personnel in their late 20's.
Many years later, I still have my hair colored, though softer at this age, and believe it does help in a younger appearance.

My adult sons now also use a little hair coloring, and I believe it helps them feel more confident as needed.

[Hortensis]

7. I noticed the ageist comments on this forum dropped

recently and wondered if that was simply from pointing out that ageism existed.

IBM's breaking the law is part of the national anti-regulation mood acting out in business. An anti-regulation mood is understandable in business, but how was it inculcated into the working classes, starting in the 1980s? We know who did it.

[Achilleaze]

8. Generation G

[dlk]

9. Age Discrimination is Very Real and Much More Widespread than is Commonly Reported

[infullview]

10. IBM is not the only company guilty of age descrimination. Libert Mutual Insurance had a class action

They culled hundreds of people that were over 50. They ended up settling and giving these people ridiculous amounts of money.

[knightmaar]

11. This is one reason you take care of your own early retirement

Working at a company like IBM, you can stash away a lot of cash while earning well into 6 figures.

By age 40 or so, you can plan smartly enough to be ready to retire. Then you view those short term contracts as little jobs to keep you busy in between long, enjoyable vacations.

[Farmer-Rick]

25. So you got to earn all your retirement income by the time you are 40?

That use to be when your earning potential substantially increased, so you could put more into savings and less into your family. That's how it worked for my parents, though they never paid anything for our college.

[knightmaar]

33. yeah. If you're making a high tech income, it's easier.

As long as you don't insist on a giant house, destination vacations, 2 SUVs idling in your driveway and a 3 hour round trip commute, you can actually do this quite easily.

Then, if you're still feeling the work-vibe at 40, you can keep it up. If not, or circumstances change, you can stop and not worry about it.

[Farmer-Rick]

37. Wow, are they still making that kind of money?

I mean 25 years ago the money was good but that was before in sourcing, contract workers, HB-1 visa workers and treating workers like overpaid robots.

[knightmaar]

46. With 20 years of experience? Yes. Undoubtedly.

If you have that level of experience, and you've been making good reviews etc., you shouldn't have a problem as a high tech worker breaking through 6 figures.

If you live a reasonable, not grotesquely luxurious life, you should be able to save a lot of that.

[MineralMan]

12. I had a friend who worked for IBM in the 70s and 80s.

He was a repair technician. I met him when he came to my house to repair my IBM Selectric typewriter. My wife and I became friends with him and his wife. He lost his job when, of all things, IBM Selectric typewriters became obsolete. He retrained on other IBM hardware, but the PC clones hurt IBM's sales of PCs, too. Finally, he lost his job with IBM. He was simply obsolete, as were his skills.

That was a large part of the massive layoffs and firings back in the 1980s. Technology changed, and it changed quickly and over just a few years. I doubt that most people have any idea how many of those IBM Selectric typewriters there were out there. Countless millions of them went obsolete practically overnight, really.

I bought my first PC clone in 1984. I added a daisy-wheel printer and later an HP Laserjet Series II. The Selectric typewriter that I had used to type hundreds of magazine articles went into the closet, and from there to the landfill not too long after. With it went my friends job. It was no longer useful to me. When I bought it, brand new, it cost over $600. By the time I trashed it, it was worthless.

And so technology went. Now, I almost never even print anything out at all. I had to teach my editors at even PC World magazine how to retrieve articles I had written online. Step-by-step. One of the country's largest computer magazines, and I wrote for them for a couple of years before they finally let me not send articles to them on paper. From 1985 to 1987, they had someone who typed them into a computer at their offices from paper copy. Once I showed my editor how he could just dial up the BBS I had set up on a PC that I had replaced, that was the end of paper printouts for me. It took that long.

Technology marches on and jobs are lost when it does. A guy somehow has to keep up with the changes.

[sinkingfeeling]

27. I just sold my Selectric for $300. Had a guy clean it up (ex IBM guy)

so it worked like new after all those years.

[MineralMan]

30. Wow! I finally bought another one, from Goodwill.

I paid $15 for it, in perfect working order. I use it to fill out forms, when pdf versions aren't available.

Maybe I'll eBay it and look for more of them.

[Sherman A1]

13. They all do it.

Hit 50 and your corporate expiration date is stamped on your forehead. I was lucky to work in a Union shop and had enough experience in a job that most of management didn’t understand that I could simply stare down the parade of younger bosses and workers. I was part of the group that literally wrote the book 📖 on my job which was a 3 year project to produce a 226 page manual and 100 question test. Even with all that on my side I was pushed out early.

They asked when I wanted my retirement party and I told them don’t bother and keep the watch. Turned in my uniform, keys and even my pens, clocked out and went home.

[getagrip_already]

14. There is an industry term for this..

It's colloquially called "cleaning the books". It's happened at every large tech company I ever worked for, all household names.

It gave birth to another term common in the industry: "taking a haircut". That's where you end up finding another job doing more or less what you were doing, but for a lot less money. So one person would go from IBM to HP, another from HP to Dell, another Dell to EMC. The companies would end up retaining skill sets and jobs, but at a lower wage rate.

It's the new normal.

[infullview]

34. I know I'm going to get flammed for this, but H1-B visas didn't make this any better either.

Industry lobbied to increase the number of Visa's so they could replace expensive local talent for inexpensive foreign workers. And that is the sad truth. It mostly affected software and electrical engineers, but I'm sure other technical fields got hit as well.

We need to get money out of politics.

[getagrip_already]

49. well, ok, fair enough, but how many do you think there are?

There are only about 65k issued each year. Renewals are in that number. There also 20k visas issued each year for foreignors with an advanced technology degree.

In the vast pool of workers, the effect isn't that great outside of a few key fields. Most of those visa's are used for specific jobs or technologies (biomed, genetics, programmers, etc).

I've never seen them in any of the departments I've directly worked in.

But yeah, they do contribute to the availability of trained workers who can be swapped in at a lower cost.

[infullview]

59. Enough that bumped into them on more than one occaision in software development and R and D.

[Ilsa]

67. What getagrip said... and per my

Better half, his industry has had a difficult time finding personnel willing to learn the unsexy jobs of POS transaction coding, security, etc.

[infullview]

73. Not clear on what you mean.

I can tell you that I personally know that companies like IDEXX in Portland, ME use a lot of H1-B people and that there are "companies" who's sole function in life are to "hire" H1-B people so they can turn around and place them in a real tech companies at a substantial profit. It's really slimy and it takes jobs away from local talent by undercutting the market.

[Ilsa]

74. In this particular case, according to my better half,

the company cannot find anyone with the previous experience or training to take some of these jobs, and they are good paying jobs. Plus, the company is paying the expenses of obtaining the H-1B visa.

[Nitram]

15. Capitalism at its finest.

[bearfan454]

16. IBM forced us out

They sold building 60 to Multek in Austin in 1998. It was the panel plant(circuit boards). 80% of the people had between 10 and 14 years there. I had 14. The good retirement kicked in at 15 years back then. These were the choices I had:

Take $79.92 a month for life starting immediately
Take $598.00 a month at 62
Take $698.00 a month at 65

and no insurance. I am damn lucky to have VA for medical.

I took the first option and have been getting it since 1998. Just about all corporations do similar things now days. I will be retiring this year in Oct. I want my age 62 early SS before the shit birds in charge now decide it is reduced. My buddy went to the SS office to sign up a few months ago. They open at 8:00. He got there at 7:00 and 25 people were in line in front of him. The baby boomers(me) are grabbing what they can while it is still there.

[Ligyron]

32. That's what I did with SS.

Took it as soon as I was eligible. Wait 3 more years for a couple hundred more a month?


Hell, I could be dead by then along with SS eligibility for anything.

[appalachiablue]

39. SS offfices closing, offering workers early retirement & more for obvious reasons.

Cutting the budget and fewer staff to assist, creates more frustration, delay in services, contempt for guvmit.

[Dustlawyer]

17. And they want to raise the age limit for SS!

What are we to do for income during those extra years while we wait to be eligible? Proving age discrimination requires evidence that is usually destroyed or never exists on paper or computer. Rare is the case where this comes to light, they always make some excuse that would not violate the law.

In Right to Work states they don’t have to give a reason for termination.

[bearfan454]

20. It is a fact that older workers won't get hired.

I have seen it too many times to believe anything else.

[getagrip_already]

50. this is changing.....

I have two friends in their late 60's that got rehired at major companies recently. They had accepted early retirement a while ago but needed the money. They were hired at more or less the going wage for the jobs they took (over 6 figures).

As baby boomers retire, the workforce will shrink. They will need the older workers.

The problem with older workers, especially those that have been idle for a few years, is their skill set has become unmarketable. Nobody cares if you program for windows 7. Nobody cares if your last cisco cert expired 5 years ago.

You need a skill set that employers want today. That applies if you are 45 or 65.

There are lots of jobs out there, but you have to get in the door, and with more and more recruiters screening applications its becoming harder and harder to get a shot at a job.

In the worst cases, jobs are marketed to facebook users with a specific profile, which often includes age. It's not technically illegal since they aren't restricting the job or interviews to a specific age range, just the advertising for that job.

It's the new awful.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. "In Right to Work states they don't have to give a reason for termination."

You are conflating "right to work" with "at-will employment." "Right to work" is a state rule that means you can benefit from collective bargaining contracts without paying union dues. "At-will employment" is an understanding of federal employment law that means your employer can fire you for any reason other than being a member of a protected class, or unless you are covered by a contract.

[Brainstormy]

18. Coke did the same thing. n/t

[Rene]

22. check out site watchingibm com

follow all the links to many many people telling their stories about job layoffs/moves overseas

[Brainstormy]

45. all of us oldies

were replaced by young folks from India. When I went back, on a temp contract basis, the floor looked like New Delhi. Not one of those of us who were over 50 ever got another permanent job.

[Dorn]

23. Quicken Loans did it to me / Ageism is rampant in US

1) I got my degree later in life at Eastern Michigan, I was almost 40
2) I applied to Quicken Loans in Detroit and got a phone interview
3) Call ended quickly when they asked why I had so much experience I I told that that I got my degree after working for 20 years

I've spoken to people who have worked at Quicken, they confirmed that there is a Logan's Run characteristic at the company.

[sinkingfeeling]

26. Brought tears to my eyes. I saw the writing on the wall way back in 1992

when I was an IBM manager in Dallas. I had to attend a presentation on how to lower 10% of my staff's performance ratings. The first massive layoff came that year. Terms were generous. I left management, but hit the age mark ten years later. I was offered a deal: sit at home for a year and take full retirement 10 months later. That's how my 30 year IBM "career" ended. I was 54.

[samnsara]

28. my hubby was director of hospital pharmacy...same thing happened to him at age 60 and then a

..whole slew of older hospital managers got walked out...including the ones who made the decision about hubby. W are an 'at will' state.

[appalachiablue]

31. Ageism, racism, sexism & more seem wide open in this new conservative era.

Never would have believed the major roll backs, all related, after so much progress was achieved.

[meow2u3]

40. K&R for exposure of rampant age discrimination

[FarCenter]

41. Engineers and computer scientists have to study about 10 hours/week to keep up

It takes about 5000 hours of college/on-the-job-training to become fully proficient.

Each 5 years, about half of what you know becomes obsolete.

Therefore, you need to put in 500 hours / year to keep up.

It come with the territory in those professions. It's a simple consequence of the rate of change.

[DrDan]

43. and training at IBM has taken a nasty turn - training is done on employee time - keep-up or ship-out

btw, I am a happily-retired ex-IBMer . . . happy to be retired from there, that is.

[FarCenter]

47. Employers will only train you in things specific to the company

Employers tend not to train employees in subjects that would make them more employable by other companies or in subjects that students are running up debt to learn on their own. In the latter case, they would rather get the skills by hiring the newly indebted student.

So yes, the 10 hours / week might come partly from corporate training, but it largely has to come from seeking assignments that allow you to learn while doing, from chiseling out time during work hours to learn on your own, self-study on your own times, attending vendor courses, on-line courses, etc.

But the personal time burden is always higher than, for example, the continuing education requirement typical for other profession's license renewal.

[iluvtennis]

51. IBM worked around the workplace laws for older ppl. Nothing but GREED. Shameful.

[hvn_nbr_2]

52. It's not just IBM. It's the whole computer/high tech industry.

I worked in the industry for 40+ years. In that 40+ years I never saw a single high tech worker (programmer, engineer, tech writer, technical support, etc.) retire from a job. High tech workers either change careers or retire from a place of unemployment when they can't even get an interview for a job.

[Stand and Fight]

62. Bingo. Doing the former myself right now.

It's simply not worth it when we're expected to work long hours AND stay on top of new developments/languages on our time. Finished my MBA, and now I'm finishing up another masters in an entirely different field. Can't afford to mess around when I'm nearing the ages most discriminated against. Especially since many high tech jobs are being outsourced to near-/far-shore developers who work remotely for far less than Americans. Luckily I've good people skills, strong business acumen, and a knack for management. Those jobs are pretty safe and pay well.

[Demovictory9]

55. That sucks

[MarvinGardens]

56. I see it in science too.

I have spoken out against it when I was involved in hiring decisions and saw it happening. "Overqualified" is code for "too old". I was at a different company in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We were hiring for a couple of Chemist 1 positions, and had all these applicants with Chemist 3 or higher level of experience. A manager did not want to consider them, because "they'll leave as soon as they find something better." I thought we should hire the most experienced folks for the money. They know the pay range for this position. My reply: "If they could find something better, you think they'd apply for this? You think young people won't leave if they find something better?"

It's not uncommon in my field for older applicants to omit some experience, master's degrees, etc. from their resumes.

It affected my Dad too. He was laid off from a good job in the 90s, and had to work not so good contract jobs for years before he found something good.

[mn9driver]

57. Everyone is disposable.

I've seen this happen over and over again to friends and relatives who were happy at their jobs and doing good work. At some point in their 40's or early 50's, they get pushed out. After being unemployed for a few months, the company sends them a letter offering to give them a lump sum settlement on their accrued pension and benefits.

Even though the offer is absurdly low, they almost all take it because at that point they are desperate. In the meantime, the company has replaced them with a young person who has a lower salary and no pension or retirement other than a 401k plan. Welcome to 21st century America.

[niyad]

58. BM and The Holocaust - the story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany

by edwin black

PublicEnquiry
Published on Apr 23, 2011
When Hitler came to power, a central Nazi goal was to identify and destroy Germany's 600,000 Jews. To Nazis, Jews were not just those who practiced Judaism, but those of Jewish blood, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or even conversion to Christianity. Only after Jews were identified could they be targeted for asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination. To search generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany--and later throughout Europe--was a cross-indexing task so monumental, it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed....

Dehomag and other IBM subsidiaries custom-designed the applications. Its technicians sent mock-ups of punch cards back and forth to Reich offices until the data columns were acceptable, much as any software designer would today. Punch cards could only be designed, printed, and purchased from one source: IBM. The machines were not sold, they were leased, and regularly maintained and upgraded by only one source: IBM. IBM subsidiaries trained the Nazi officers and their surrogates throughout Europe, set up branch offices and local dealerships throughout Nazi Europe staffed by a revolving door of IBM employees, and scoured paper mills to produce as many as 1.5 billion punch cards a year in Germany alone. Moreover, the fragile machines were serviced on site about once per month, even when that site was in or near a concentration camp. IBM Germany's headquarters in Berlin maintained duplicates of many code books, much as any IBM service bureau today would maintain data backups for computers.

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/exc...

[Demsrule86]

61. Hubs was forced out a couple of years ago...he fought the last couple to save a shitty pension.

[BobTheSubgenius]

65. This hardly sounds like the square-dealing corporation we've all come to know and love, does it?

The one that used to (and maybe still does) have a $250,000,000 war chest to combat any encroachment by unions. I, along with several other people I worked with, were informed of this in the late 70's by IBEW Chicago.

A big organizing push in the 70's had failed. Since I left that line of work in the 80's, similar efforts in both 1999 and 2016 have also failed.

A benevolent organization like that wouldn't purge their work force based on age, would they? I mean...it's not only illegal (although I bet work-arounds exist), but it's just not...cricket.

[dflprincess]

66. And the Republicans want to raise the age for Social Security to 70 nt

[Sophia4]

68. It isn't just IBM.

Age discrimination is the next civil rights battle.

Baby boomers are at or past the age when age discrimination becomes a problem.

Either we lower the age at which a person is eligible for Social Security or we vigorously fight age discrimination.

That's our choice.

Oh, the third alternative is having lots of elderly homeless people under our bridges.

But the third alternative is unacceptable in my view.

[catrose]

69. A friend recently interviewed there

and was told "We're looking for millennials."

Kind of obvious.

[RainCaster]

71. Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook - they all do it

Nobody cares