IBM Settles Age Discrimination Case That Sought Top Execs' Emails

Less than a week after IBM was ordered in an age discrimination lawsuit to produce internal emails in which its former CEO and former SVP of human resources discuss reducing the number of older workers, the IT giant chose to settle the case for an undisclosed sum rather than proceed to trial next month. The Register reports: The order, issued on June 9, in Schenfeld v. IBM, describes Exhibit 10, which 'contains emails that discuss the effort taken by IBM to increase the number of 'millennial' employees.' Plaintiff Eugene Schenfeld, who worked as an IBM research scientist when current CEO Arvind Krishna ran IBM's research group, sued IBM for age discrimination in November, 2018. His claim is one of many that followed a March 2018 report by ProPublica and Mother Jones about a concerted effort to de-age IBM and a 2020 finding by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that IBM executives had directed managers to get rid of older workers to make room for younger ones.

'The emails contained within Exhibit 10 evidence an interest at the then CEO-level to change the profile of IBM employees so that it reflected a younger workforce,' said New Jersey Superior Court Judge Alberto Rivas in his order. On June 14 the judge dismissed the case because IBM agreed to settle. That will prevent the messages in which former CEO Ginny Rometty and former HR SVP Diane Gherson are said to discuss what the judge described as 'the push to increase the number of millennial employees and decrease the number of older employees' from being made public. 'The facts of the matter have not changed: there was and is no systemic age discrimination at IBM and the data back that up,' IBM's spokesperson said. 'Further, with regards to the Schenfeld case, age played no role whatsoever in this individual's departure.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.