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.