AT&T EEOC Suit.
Last Friday (July 26, 2002)
Dow Jones Business News
reported that the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
filed a lawsuit against AT&T's Florham Park, NJ facility.
I saw the story at
Yahoo! Finance.
The article mentions complaints
by two prospective employees who claim they were denied employment
because of their age.
I find this particularly interesting in light of my (only partially
successful) attempts to find out the age statistics of those in my
job universe who were layed off in March versus those who
were retained. I and others were put in separate "universes" of
just one and thus (in effect) were given no age statistics at all.
Although I do not have hard evidence, my guess is the March layoffs
at AT& Labs were done in a two step process:
- First, people who happened to be working on matters that were no
longer essential to a stripped down and troubled AT&T were let go.
- Second, older people who were working on projects that were
retained, but who have higher salaries and higher pension costs,
were let go.
As the oldest person with the greatest number of years of service
working on
Natural Voices,
one of the most successful projects in AT& Labs, I fell
into the second category. The only question in my mind is are
there enough young people in the first category to cover up the
age discrimination in the second category, statistically speaking.