Iconic OEM Sued for Ageism

A group of four former employees alleged to be victims of HP’s ageist policies and filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in San Jose.

Hewlett-Packard (“HP”) announced the redundancy policy in 2012 and since then the number of layoffs has snowballed to 80,000. According to mercurynews.com, the former employees seeking for joint suit were laid off at ages ranging from 52 to 63. The complaint asserted that HP’s goal “was to make the company younger”. It was alleged HP has intentionally shed off its older employees and replaced them with younger employees. “HP has hired a disproportionately large number of new employees under the age of 40 to replace employees aged 40 and older who were terminated,” stated the complaint.

The charge was allegedly ascribed to the statement of the HP chairwoman and Enterprise CEO, Meg Whitman. Whitman said the company needs to return to a labor pyramid with a lot of early career people bringing in a lot of knowledge.

Confronted by the accusations, the spokesman from HP stated: “Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a long-standing commitment to the principles of equal employment opportunity and age inclusion is no exception. The decision to implement a workforce reduction is always difficult, but we are confident that our decisions were based on legitimate factors unrelated to age.”

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