If you are an IT worker who is feeling the sting of age discrimination, you are not alone. Even if you are an IT worker for an employer who is not a tech company, you still may be experiencing age discrimination because there is a perception that younger workers will automatically be more knowledgeable about innovative industry trends. This is true even if you are the IT Systems manager for a public entity such as a town or a school. Younger workers are shown favor simply because of their age. Don’t sit on your rights. I have successfully represented numerous employees who were being pushed out of their jobs simply because of their age and was successful in obtaining monetary compensation for them.
Numerous surveys reveal that younger employees in the tech industry are more favored simply because of their age. A report by Statista found that age 32 was the average median employee age at seventeen top tech companies, compared with age 42 for the entire U.S. workforce.
IT Workers Are Essential Workers Performing Unique Functions.
If your employer used the term “downsizing ” when they fired you or informed you they are doing a restructuring, it could be for a legal bonafide business purpose under the business judgment rule. However, depending on the totality of the circumstances, it might be a pretext for illegal discrimination. An IT manager cannot have his job duties be eliminated! I have represented both public and private employees whose jobs were supposedly being eliminated in a “restructuring” and been successful in recovering money for them.
Contract Workers May Still Be Subject to Illegal Age Discrimination
If your employer classifies you as an independent contractor and/or you have a renewable contract, it is still illegal to have age be a factor in an employer’s decision to not renew your contract.
Clients have come to me devastated when their employers informed them that their employment contract was not being renewed. A question that is commonly asked is, “Can this be illegal age discrimination, if I was not actually fired?” The simple answer is “Yes” if the facts support discrimination based on age. The New Jersey Supreme Court has definitely held that a failure to renew a contract based on age is the equivalent of an actual termination based on age, which under the NJLAD is illegal.
Some businesses or public employers mistakenly think they will be able to circumvent the NJLAD prohibitions on illegal termination based on age discrimination if they only have renewable contract, i.e., they will simply not renew an older worker’s contract when they want to have a younger person for the position.
By way of example, they mistakenly believe they will be able to have a continuous workforce of under-age-40 IT experts based on the attrition driven by the renewable-contracts-only business model. This is not the law in New Jersey. In a seminal age discrimination lawsuit brought against a community college, Nini v. Mercer County Community College, the NJ Supreme court held that a non- renewal of contract is tantamount to a forced resignation, and that “forced resignations” were equivalent to actual terminations.
Particular IT Industry Age Discrimination Extends to Start-ups and Venture Capitalists
Even start-ups and venture capitalists may not be the free-thinking and progressive entrepreneurial business formations that they envision as themselves. In an annual survey of venture-backed founders, they believed that age bias in the industry was the strongest investors’ negative driver of all protected classes.
Eighty-nine percent (89 %) of those surveyed reported that older workers who usually face age discrimination in the tech industry. They further responded that the investors of startups had biases based on age more than any other of the protected classes. The survey responder reported that 37% of startup investors had age bias against founders, that 28% of startup investors had gender bias and 26% had racial bias.
No matter your occupation, whether you are mid-level employee or a Technology Manager for a private company or public employer, or your work involves IT Networking and Security, Surveillance, Disaster Recovery, etc., and you think your employer is pushing you out because of your age, you may contact this office for a free consultation.
DO NOT SIT ON YOUR RIGHTS!
I have successfully represented numerous employees of both public and private employers, who were unfairly retaliated against or terminated because of their age and was successful in obtaining monetary compensation for them, including top-tier professionals.
If you were placed on a PIP and are thinking about resigning, you should contact this law office before you do so. If you think your employer is forcing you out or illegally retaliating against you or if you were terminated, you should call me now for a free consultation. I am an experienced, aggressive and compassionate employment law attorney
Do not sit on your rights, or you may lose the right to file your claim.
If you are being subjected to such unlawful workplace retaliation, contact Hope A. Lang, Attorney at Law today for a free consultation. I accept employment law cases from all over New Jersey.
New Jersey employment attorney, Hope A. Lang, Attorney at Law serves clients throughout the state, including Bergen, Middlesex, Essex, Hudson, Monmouth, Ocean, Union, Camden, Passaic, and Morris Counties with locations in Southern, Central, Western and Northern NJ to meet with clients.