Age Discrimination

    As an employee at a West Coast Division of ABC company for over 40 years, your only job since you graduated college, at age 22, and now a manager of 30 operations folks, you have been asked to come to a senior leadership meeting. You have not been to senior leadership meetings before, only know of their names, but now you are invited to one of their meetings and you are excited. As you prepare for the meeting, showing all your team’s accomplishments, their career paths, your team’s retention rates, and other positive data, you also know that the Company is converting XXSoft Groups, a software program that promotes lots of group interaction, automatic saves on documents, multiple edits without checking out the document, automatic meeting recordings, and great group working chats, document reviews, and even phone calls. The software should replace emails, meeting invites, which will save lots of time. You admit you are struggling to adjust to the new soft program, but you will get it soon. Your other colleagues, also managers of teams, are well younger than you, and during managerial meetings, you learn that you are the only one that still has an early iPhone 5 version, do not have a Facebook or Instagram account, nor do you know “what is a Tik Tok,” you have no Netflix, or other streaming accounts, you do not have TV, but enjoy public radio, such as NPR. Moreover, you notice you are the only manger with gray/white hair and still drive and early 2000s automobile and do not plan to convert to electric vehicles, until charging stations are just as available as gas stations. At the senior leaders meeting, you see for the first time that they are also much younger than you. They ask you sit down across the “C Suite” team – executive, operations, finance, information, security, and human relations [CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CSO, and HR VP] and you comply. After pleasantries, the CEO turns to you to notify you that you will be given a generous severance package, but that your time with ABC Company is over, as the “Company’s face is to match today’s technology, new, effective, cutting edge and agile, and that you do not match the Company’s image, but only that of an “old dinosaur, using early 2000’s technology, and not capable of, or refusing to adjust to today’s technology, lifestyle and social expectations.” Moreover, the HR VP says that complaints have made against you, as a non-team player, as you usually do not join your colleagues for Friday Happy Hour and often when asked what you did this past weekend, you say, “went to church and my wife and I visited our grandkids.” in an apparent slight to those who are not religious, married, or have children, much less grandchildren.” You attempt to refute their claims but are not allowed to speak. The Chief Security Officer (CSO) says your building pass is about to be “deactivated,” so it is best to leave quietly. You comply and soon, with your “infamous” box of personal items, you walk out of the building. A day later, you contact an attorney, whose specializes in Age and Religious Discrimination cases. You present the facts of the previous day and hope it is enough for the attorney to state, “You have a possible case of Title VII Age Discrimination violation, and I can represent you.” Looking from the Attorney’s perspective, and their legal training, it turns out that above facts should fall into a possible Title VII Age Discrimination Violation. 1. Are there enough facts to file an Age Discrimination Complaint against ABC Company and its Officers, why or why not? 2. What are the provisions the attorney must prove? Please discuss the strengths/weaknesses of the above facts as they relate to the Violation requirements? 3. If successful, what would you, as the former employee, want as compensation for this ordeal, especially for the humiliation of everyone seeing you walk out the building, with your “personal box,” and other compensation, such as loss of future wages, bonuses, etc.? The ABC Company will argue that it gave you a generous severance package, do they have an argument that they have not violated your Title VII rights? Why or why not?