#ageism

Isn't that illegal?

Let's be honest here, we all know what the layoffs are going to be all about: getting rid of the older folks who are the highest earners. I know they'll mask it by also getting rid of some younger folks, but that won't remove the intent. My question is, is there anything that can be done about this, legally?

The U.S. government has put employers on notice over practices that disadvantage American workers. Microsoft has faced prominent federal scrutiny and publicly defended its visa practices. Instacart has settled allegations that its recruitment favored temporary-visa workers over U.S. and American applicants. The same scrutiny must reach IBM.

IBM has made its commitment to American workers part of its public pitch. In an April 28, 2025 announcement, Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna declared: “We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago.” That carefully polished story collides with the company’s employment record. American factories do not erase years of discrimination disputes or IBM’s efforts to keep employment records out of public view. A company that trades on American jobs should have to answer for how it treats the Americans doing them.

American workers must not become the default casualties of global restructuring simply because their jobs are easier to eliminate. Where stronger protections abroad require employers to justify cuts against local business conditions, multinationals should not exploit weaker U.S. protections by loading the reductions onto Americans. The revenue they generate and the performance of the American business must count. Weaker employment protections should never become a license to make American workers pay for problems elsewhere.

IBM’s employment history is more troubling than its patriotic marketing suggests. The Second Circuit’s August 4, 2023 opinion records a 2020 EEOC finding of reasonable cause to believe IBM discriminated against older workers in the United States because of their age. These were workers in the very country whose jobs and manufacturing IBM now invokes to burnish its image. The court also upheld IBM’s request to keep certain documents from confidential employment arbitrations sealed. It enforced the confidentiality arrangements, leaving those records outside public view. That history belongs alongside the speeches about American jobs.

Another pending EEOC case concerns Kenneth McTigue, a U.S. IBM employee with nearly 30 years of service. A retention order issued by IBM’s legal department expressly records allegations of age discrimination, national origin discrimination, and retaliation by IBM. It identifies the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as the investigating US government agency. It also explicitly names IBM programs: Project Falcon, the resource action Sandstone, and the Transform to Grow (T2G) committee. It specifies records concerning those project objectives, benchmarking, headcount-reduction targets, workforce strategy and the planning and execution of workforce actions. It also identifies records concerning compensation and McTigue’s demotion and forced international relocation.

IBM’s own preservation instruction scope raises the prospect of something much larger than one employee’s treatment. Those records could help establish whether the decisions challenged by McTigue reflected common practices affecting other employees. The question is whether his case exposes a wider, systemic problem in how IBM decides whose jobs and careers are expendable.

The emails use stark, controlling language: “Do not forward this document for any reason.” The directive also instructs recipients not to communicate with McTigue about the matter. Its confidentiality provision includes the qualification “unless otherwise directed by an IBM attorney or as permitted by law.” Even with that qualification, the message reads like a warning: keep the document contained, keep discussion constrained, and do not speak to the employee whose allegations are at issue. This is language that can stifle discussion by making silence feel like the safest choice even where speaking is legally permitted. That silence serves IBM. The less information circulates, the harder it becomes for employees to connect experiences, for outsiders to ask informed questions, and for the public to challenge the company’s carefully managed image.

Control the information. Protect the brand. American workers should not have to fight through a wall of controlled communication to get discrimination allegations taken seriously.

Put IBM’s workforce decisions under a public spotlight. Demand to know who was targeted, who was protected, and whether business performance or the ease of dismissal drove those choices. Make the executives responsible answer those questions publicly. IBM’s brand gets no free pass.

The quantum investment makes that demand more urgent. On September 16, 2026, the Commerce Department announced a final CHIPS research and development award of up to $1 billion to Anderon, an IBM subsidiary, to advance a quantum semiconductor foundry. Public backing for America’s technological future should bring stronger expectations of accountability. A company entrusted with helping build America’s future should have to answer hard questions about its treatment of America’s workers. IBM’s quantum ambitions should intensify scrutiny of its employment practices.

No more taxpayer backing for IBM without a public accounting of its treatment of American workers.

Free republication permitted and encouraged.

We received a great deal of interest in the position and the hiring process has been very competitive. While we were impressed with your application, we are moving forward with other applicants that better match our needs for this role.

Our ideal fit would be somebody under 40 years old that can take low pay.

I'm tired of seeing employees blame each other based on age while the executives keep getting away with everything. We're not the problem here, the people running this company are.

I was voluntold to accept "early retirement" in 2024. I had the pleasure of transferring knowledge to the offshore Accenture team prior to my "retirement".

What l noticed was that all Veterans of the US Armed forces in the department (myself included) were over 55 and pushed out the door.

I would be surprised if management knew or cared that the department kicked all Veterans to the curb.

That's my pre Veterans day message.

Is Northwestern Mutual using “career progression” and resume accomplishments as a convenient way to screen out experienced, older employees?

Years of delivering measurable business outcomes, solving complex problems, and consistently producing results should matter more than job titles, promotions, or how well someone navigates internal politics.

Yet there appears to be an increasing emphasis on visibility, popularity, and perceived career trajectory rather than actual contributions and business impact.

This raises a serious question: Are experienced employees being unfairly disadvantaged because their resumes don’t demonstrate the kind of upward mobility leadership expects?

Performance should be measured by outcomes, not popularity. Experience should be valued, not penalized.

Are others at Northwestern Mutual seeing similar patterns in hiring, promotions, or performance evaluations?

If this is a widespread pattern disproportionately affecting older employees, could there be grounds for a class-action age discrimination lawsuit? Would others who have experienced similar treatment be interested in exploring their legal options together?

One of the strangest things that I’ve experienced at State Farm is the complete. disregard for anyone who has experience knowledge or wisdom with respect to being at the company for an extended period of time. Instead, we put an inexperienced people in section manager leadership development opportunity over someone who has over two decades of experience because the person with over two decades of experience is a white male in their 50s. But we are a company of integrity right? Fu-k the fu-k off. People work their entire careers for opportunities, move to hubs to be ignored late in their careers. Disgusting

Older workers: Empty nest (kids out of the house, can put more into work if needed), decades of experience, with VZ for decade(s) so would have already been canned if they were not good at their job (recall VZ had 200K+ fulltime employees 15 years ago or so)... Why would you kick them to the curb when they are in arguably the most productive years of their lives?

Short sighted id--ts in leadership positions. Its like not maintaining your vehicle to save a few buck up front. But, I guess leadership plans to not have an interest/stake in the car (VZ) in the future.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Age Kept Fired
30s 9 3
40s 8 7
50s 8 7
60+ 3 3
Total 28 20

The EOCs distain for anyone over 40 is simply due to the fact that the majority of us are not good sheep. Today in the cafe at my location they were running a 30% off sale on BNY merch and there was literally a line. Why would anyone in their right mind spend money to have the logo for the company that will do anything to lay you off and send your job overseas to be made a mess of? They were all young kids and H1-Bs in line. Disgusts me.

Is it just me, or does it seem to others as well that's what's happening here?

If this is strictly about money and not performance/experience, aren't they going to be the primary target?

Comments on this forum Ageism is real at BNY, as commenters describe it like a corporate stress test where leadership keeps turning up the heat to see how much fear, uncertainty and doubt the workforce can tolerate. In literal and legal terms, age discrimination means targeting workers forty and older for reduced opportunities or termination. Inside BNY, the pressure starts in the forties, becomes a flashing warning light in the fifties, and turns into a countdown clock in the sixties. The message is clear. As your career matures, leadership sees you as a cost to eliminate rather than a capability to leverage.

This behavior is not just bad management. It is corrosive to employees’ mental and emotional well-being. When people learn that tenure, knowledge and loyalty are liabilities, they stop trusting leadership, stop believing in the mission and start bracing for impact. It is also bad for business. Purging experience weakens judgment, slows delivery and erodes client confidence. And it is bad for society. Companies that treat seasoned workers like disposable parts contribute to instability, insecurity and a culture where careers have an expiration date.

BNY’s age bias exposes the gap between its public image and its internal reality. Awards like America’s Most Innovative Companies, World’s Most Admired Companies and Most Just Companies imply a workplace that values people. Yet the internal signals suggest a company that values churn, cheap labor and short-term savings.

Experienced workers do have protections. Document patterns, save emails, request written justification for role changes and consult employment attorneys who specialize in age discrimination. When leadership de‑values experience, the law becomes one of the few instruments employees can rely on but only after hiring a good attorney. It's sad when employees have to resort to their own legal tactics to defend their career and lifetime dedication to the company while leadership and institutional confidence continues to go even lower.

I'm now at the point where I'm hoping to be cut now, to avoid an even smaller package down the road. I used to hope not to be laid off, but the way we're going, it's only a matter of time for those of us of a certain age, so now I've pivoted to just hoping to get the best deal out of it. Sad but that's our new reality.

Only two people in my department were laid off back in May, but both were age 65 or older and had just been promoted to Principal with HR mandating management give them sufficient raises commiserate with their experience. One had received the Michael Dell Award and another was due to reach her 30th year with Dell.

I heard many people got laid off within a year after moving to a hub city. I want to know if any of them were in 40s or 50s and if the surplus was because they moved on their own or if their position was redundant due to their project getting closed.

I'm curious about the people who were actually laid off by BNY. How old were you when you were let go, and how many years had you worked here? I'm not trying to draw conclusions from a handful of stories, but I'd like to see what people are reporting. There seem to be a lot of different theories about who gets selected.

A lot of people who were recently cut were in the 50+ age bracket. And I mean a lot. To the point where it's bordering on age discrimination, if not even going beyond that. I was just wondering if there is ground for a class action based on that and if the answer is yes, how would somebody go about starting the process?

Have you noticed the large volume of 45+ layoffs at FIS? They are moving departments to Accenture and other third party firms or cutting 45+ aged personnel from teams. I was one. I know many. If you read Linked in, there is a continuous layoffs for 45+ where departments were not moved. They are sneaking around the mass layoffs at once with continued monthly scattered layoffs but can an attorney or firm investigate this process for discrimination. The severance forces us to be quiet but it shouldn’t be hard to gather data to research the discrimination. It was commonly noted by SF and her new senior executives the company work force was too old. Shouldn’t be hard to locate internal communications through discovery and list/age of layoffs the past two years.

Did they pay that Boston consulting firm to develop the plan to try to launder the age discrimination like last time ? How does Farley feel about age discrimination ?

A federal lawsuit claims Ford Motor Company used a rigged performance rating system to conduct a "soft layoff." The complaint alleges that HR instructed managers to give employees bad ratings to justify terminations. This system allegedly targeted older workers and those nearing retirement milestones. One analyst with 28 years of service was terminated shortly before a key pension benefit. The lawsuit seeks reinstatement or compensation for the affected employee.

Detroit, Michigan

https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/employment-law/ford-ran-a-soft-layoff-through-rigged-performance-ratings-suit-claims/591656

A federal lawsuit filed against Ford Motor Company alleges the automaker used a performance management system to create grounds for terminating salaried employees without conducting formal layoffs.

The complaint, filed on September 28 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, centres on the termination of a 57-year-old data analyst who worked at Ford for 28 years and was approximately two years away from a key retirement milestone.

According to the filing, the employee's dismissal formed part of a wider company-wide "stealth" or "soft layoff" programme that allegedly relied on manipulated performance ratings to reduce headcount.

https://www.peoplematters.in/news/strategic-hr/ford-turned-performance-reviews-into-a-layoff-tool-suit-alleges-52428

After several months of “redeployment” into a role that was very different from my previous job, I was told I could no longer return to my original position because it was supposedly no longer available. The whole situation seemed questionable from the start. Today I saw a video from IG influencer Greg Langstaff (just Google it) that raised some points that appear to confirm my concerns. #OWBPA #Ageism

I was recently laid off (displaced). I’m over 40, and as part of the separation process I received an OWBPA disclosure/report listing the ages of employees included in the layoff group. Everyone listed in the report was also over 40.

I’m trying to understand whether this was an isolated situation involving my team or whether other teams experienced something similar.

For anyone who was laid-off and is comfortable sharing, were the employees selected for layoff on your team predominantly or exclusively 40+?

Did you receive an OWBPA disclosure/report, and if so, did the people listed appear to be 40+?

What business unit or general function were you in? (No names or identifying details needed.)

I’m not claiming that this establishes age discrimination, and I understand there can be legitimate business reasons for particular workforce decisions. I’m trying to determine whether there are similar experiences across different teams that might indicate a broader pattern.

Please avoid posting anyone’s names or other identifying information. If you experienced something similar, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/employment-law/stray-slack-message-allegedly-exposed-ibms-plan-to-replace-older-workers/590539

Three long-term IBM employees allege they were fired to make way for younger hires, citing a "smoking-g-n" Slack message as evidence. The complaint details internal documents that allegedly labeled older workers with derogatory terms and outlined plans to hire a majority of "Early Professionals" and "Campus Hires." This lawsuit claims IBM has a pattern of age-based workforce reductions, referencing past investigations and internal language used to target senior staff. The workers are seeking back pay, lost benefits, and reinstatement or front pay. These allegations have not yet been proven in court.

New York, NY

https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/employment-law/stray-slack-message-allegedly-exposed-ibms-plan-to-replace-older-workers/590539

Recent layoffs within Oracle's cloud division disproportionately impacted employees over 40 and middle managers. A leaked document indicated that older workers constituted the largest group of affected personnel. Approximately 23% of the terminated positions were in management roles. Software developers and data center support staff also experienced job losses. This round of reductions targeted specific demographics and roles within the cloud infrastructure unit.

Austin, Texas

https://inshorts.com/en/amp_news/employees-over-40--middle-managers-hit-hardest-in-oracle-s-cloud-unit-layoffs--report-1790147324948

I was reading the severance agreement. There is a lot of verbiage around not being able to sue Oracle for age discrimination. Does anyone know if there are any class action lawsuits regarding this ? I don’t see any but was curious since yin give up your rights down the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7awnMJXNP5U

If you noticed the number of foreign workers rapidly increase in your hub, and then were hit with round and round of layoffs that seemed to target older workers, you need to contact the EEOC. You need to tell them that you were all told that unless you signed their papers that you would not receive your severance. It's no secret that at&t is using third party middle man players to hide the number of their sponsored H1B's . If you have been, or are about to be laid off, you really need to consider telling your story to the EEOC . When T flooded the number of open positions within the company, and only gave you two weeks to find something within, they may have broken the law if any of those positions went to foreign employees even if AT&T was not the direct sponsor.

Curious, if anyone in the 65+ demo has ever tried to either negotiate severance or Sue for discrimination?

They aren’t even trying to hide their plans anymore. It is common knowledge that once you hit late 40’s you are toast. Good luck becoming a retiree.

I don't understand the hold Rajat has on Ryan and the board, it's like the old fable The Emperor's New Clothes, our senior IT Joe parading around that AI is going to save the world, that the OpenVisaNet project is going to finally replace the mainframe... how long will it take before somebody realises Rajat is na--d? OpenVisaNet has been running for years, how much has that cost? In the meantime everybody is judged on how many PRs they submit, lines of code generated and tokens they use, regardless of them being an engineer or not. I used to love working here, but the well has been poisoned, until it affects shareholders directly they'll keep parading Rajat and his AI dream as the nirvana. Roll on retirement, if they don't get me first that is (being of a certain age my days are numbered).

Has anyone looked at the distribution of RIF employees? For those who were part of the RIF it should be in workday. It’s a 47 page document. Just curious what your thoughts are. I reviewed the data by extracting the PDF into and excel. I wanted to analyze it because I wanted to see what the age distribution was. I can safely say that 40+ vs 40 under age range did not have a statistical significance.associated with selection of older employees at least for the line I reviewed. The selection rate was also evenly spaced out among age bands between 8-11% on any age group. There was a disproportionate impact on Sales teams at 30%+ percent accounting for the majority of the RIF. I don’t believe these numbers include the VSP numbers.

But If you're still before SS eligible and not near Medicare, this offer is nothing special.

I have a piece of sh-t lead that is bullying based on age. Any suggestions ? Management was worthless.

I ‘medically’ retired a couple of months ago. Stress and anxiety was getting the best of me and all because of Wells Fargo. My labs showed things drastically off and my doctor took me off work so First I went out on Short term disability, this gave me time to think about my future and what was best for me.
I was the oldest on my team (62) and totally was the target or ageism. My quality and production was good - but had one bad customer survey last summer- keep in mind I had just returned to work after 3 mos due to a surgery. It impacts the team that was working on that file. I claim zero responsibility for any fault or my own as I had just returned to work. By the end of the year I was being recognized for excellent customer service. Yet, I still received a “needs improvement” for that reason - AGEISM!!! I know Charlie wants more NI so WF doesn’t have to pay out severance. To other coworkers on the same team were on PIPS due to bad quality - yet one got exceeds and the other Meets. This is soooooo wrong. I hope my prior manager reads this or HR. They will know it’s me!!
Meanwhile, I was all set up financially to retire and have zero regrets- other than I wasted too much off blood sweat and tears for this company. They can FO

Just curious....noticed some age related trends in my department...