Elain Brown Tech 02.13.2022 09:Feb AM EST

Did IBM Favor Millennial Workers Over ‘Dinobabies’ in Private Email Conversation?

IBM executive emails have discussed their "Dinobabies" employees and wanting them to be "extinct species."

The executives discussed in the email how to force out older employees.

The emails show highly incriminating animosity against older employees by people who were in the company's top-ranking officials at the time.

The company has been accused of age discrimination by former employees in a number of legal filings and news stories. Former employees legally argued that IBM tried to replace thousands of older workers with younger ones to keep up with its competitors.

Age Discrimination

Los Angeles Times reported that according to the complaint, an International Business Machines Corp. official revealed a proposal to "accelerate transformation" by "inviting the 'dinobabies' (new species) to leave" and reclassifying them as an "Extinct species."

In the filing, company officials also expressed dissatisfaction with IBM's "dated maternal workforce," which "must change," and expressed frustration that IBM had a much lower percentage of millennials in its workforce than a competitor, but stated that the rate would increase following layoffs.

The lawsuit the conversations demonstrate "highly incriminating animus" toward senior employees by officials who were at the time in the company's "highest ranks."

IBM Lawsuit

The emails that served as evidence collected emerged as part of a lawsuit IBM is facing from the company's attempt to change the age composition of its employees.

The emails collected also appear to be the first public piece of direct proof about this complaint's leadership.

According to The New York Times, Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer for the plaintiff case, "These filings reveal that top IBM executives were explicitly plotting with one another to oust older workers from IBM's workforce in order to make room for millennial employees."

Miss Liss-Riordan is the lawyer representing numerous IBM workers in this ongoing case. Although the court has not yet identified the class of this case, she is working for the class-action status of claims.

Presenting A Trendy Organization

Former IBM employees have filed legal complaints for its age discrimination complaints across the country.

It was reported that the previous vice president of IBM told the court that finding new employees is very challenging for the company.

He also stated that one way to demonstrate to millennials that IBM was not "an old fuddy duddy organization" was to present itself "as [a] cool, trendy organization."

Moreover, the statement stated the language used in the emails "is not consistent with the respect IBM has for its employees and as the facts clearly show, it does not reflect company practices or policies."

IBM Favoring Millenials?

The hiring policies of IBM were defended by Adam Pratt, an IBM spokesperson. In his words, "IBM never engaged in systematic age discrimination."

It was not because of their age that employees were laid off, but rather because of changes in business conditions and a need for specific talents.

In his remarks, Mr. Pratt stated that IBM hired more than 10,000 employees over 50 in the United States between 2010 and 2020 and that the median age of the company's workforce in the United States remained the same in each of those years, which was 48 years old.