Union, New Jersey, Legal Blog

According to data from ProPublica, IBM has gotten rid of roughly 20,000 workers aged 40 and older over the past five years. That is roughly 60 percent of those who work for the company. This has been accomplished by asking older employees to take early retirement, laying them off or simply terminating them outright. In some cases, workers in New Jersey and around the country were terminated and rehired as consultants.

IBM says that it is proud of its employees and complies with the law. ProPublica and Mother Jones used stories from over 1,000 former IBM workers as well as company documents to uncover the allegedly widespread age discrimination. The shift toward a preference for younger workers began in 2014 as the company wanted to focus more on cloud storage and analytics. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it is illegal to discriminate against people who are aged 40 or older when making employment decisions.

People face discrimination at work every day in New Jersey. Despite state and federal laws intended to protect workers, they still get harassed and mistreated by managers and co-workers for their gender, age, race and other factors they have no control over. This can quickly lead to a hostile work environment. In some cases, discrimination can become an abuse of power, such as in cases of quid pro quo sexual harassment.

Many workers facing harassment and discrimination at work hesitate to report the issue. They rightfully worry about the potential for retaliation, as well as the potential impact for their future career. While it can be terrifying to stand up for yourself against harassment and abuse, doing so protects your rights and prevents your employer from doing the same thing to someone else in the future.

New Jersey employers that offer certain types of benefit plans have an obligation to observe their fiduciary duties as established by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. In fiscal 2017, the Employee Benefits Security Administration that investigates complaints related to employer retirement plans recovered $1.1 billion, with $682.3 million coming directly from enforcement actions. All monies recovered represented a 42 percent increase from fiscal 2016, and the financial results of enforcement actions nearly doubled compared to the year before.

While recouping money in excess of $1 billion, the agency closed 1,707 civil investigations and recommended civil action for 134 cases. Among retirement plan complaints that involved criminal charges, the EBSA resolved 307 criminal cases and indicted 113 people. Convictions or guilty pleas resulted in 79 of the cases.

The Equal Pay Act offers workers in New Jersey one route for addressing claims of gender wage discrimination. A lawsuit in Maryland citing this law has regained new life after an appeals court ruled that the case should be remanded back to the district court for further consideration. The lower court had originally dismissed it on the grounds that the plaintiffs had not presented sufficient evidence to support their claim.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had filed the lawsuit on behalf of three female civil servants that worked for a state's insurance fraud investigation division. Court filings indicated that the women had been paid less than some men in comparable positions. The lower court based its first decision on the fact that other men doing the same work made less money than the women, but the appeals court decided that all male employees as a class did not have to earn more collectively than all women. Discrimination in pay based on gender among individuals at a workplace sufficed to earn the case a second look.