Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? — Part two

agediscriminationThis is the promised second part of my attempt to decide if IBM’s recent large U.S. layoff involves age discrimination in violation of federal laws. More than a week into this process I still can’t say for sure whether Big Blue is guilty or not, primarily due to the company’s secrecy. But that very secrecy should give us all pause because IBM certainly appears to be flouting or in outright violation of several federal reporting requirements.

I will now explain this in numbing detail.

Regular readers will remember that last week I suggested laid-off IBMers go to their managers or HR and ask for statistical information they are allowed to gather under two federal laws […]

By |April 6th, 2016|2016, Companies, Government, law, People, Politics|71 Comments
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Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? — Part one

agediscriminationIs IBM guilty of age discrimination in its recent huge layoff of U.S. workers? Frankly I don’t know. But I know how to find out, and this is part one of that process. Part two will follow on Friday.

Here’s what I need you to do. If you are a U.S. IBMer age 40 or older who is part of the current Resource Action you have the right under Section 201, Subsection H of the Older Worker Benefit Protection Act of 1990 (OWBPA) to request information from IBM on which employees were involved in the RA and their ages and which employees were not selected and their ages.

Quick like a bunny, ask your manager to […]

By |March 28th, 2016|2016, Companies, Government, Industry, law, People|41 Comments
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Equity crowdfunding finally arrives May 15th: curb your enthusiasm

equitycrowdfundingBack in the spring of 2012 Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act) to make it easier for small companies to raise capital. The Act recognized that nearly all job creation in the U.S. economy comes from new businesses and attempted to accelerate startups by creating whole new ways to fund them. The Act required the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by the end of 2012 to come up with regulations to enable the centerpiece of the Act, equity crowd funding, which would allow any legal U.S. resident to become a venture capitalist. But the regulations weren’t finished by the end of 2012. They weren’t […]

By |March 28th, 2016|2016, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Government, Startups|21 Comments
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The FBI v. Apple isn’t at all the way you think it is

cookjpgThe FBI holds an iPhone that was owned by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, Syed Rizwan Farook, and wants Apple to crack it. Apple CEO Tim Cook is defying the FBI request and the court order that accompanied it, saying that cracking the phone would require developing a special version of iOS that could bypass passcode encryption. If such a genetically modified mobile OS escaped into the wild it could be used by anyone to crack any current iPhone, which would be bad for Apple’s users and bad for Amurica, Cook says. So he won’t do it, dag nabbit.

That’s the big picture story dominating the tech news this […]

By |February 19th, 2016|2016, Government, law, mobile technology, Privacy and Security|140 Comments
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Chinese talking cybersecurity means security is already lost

A longtime reader and good friend of mine sent me a link this week to a CNBC story about the loss of fingerprint records in the Office of Personnel Management hack I have written about before. It’s just one more nail in the coffin of a doltish bureaucracy that — you know I’m speaking the truth here — will probably result in those doltish bureaucrats getting even more power, even more data, and ultimately losing those data, too.

So the story says they lost the fingerprint records of 56 million people! Game over.

Remember how this story unfolded? There had been a hack and some records were compromised. Then there had been a hack and […]

By |September 25th, 2015|2015, Government, Privacy and Security|55 Comments
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