Cher Forman
"Ask Cher"
Cher Forman has over 20 years of domestic and international Human Resources experience in organizations ranging from startups to $3B. As Director or Vice President, she has managed Human Resources groups at Applied Materials, Stanford Telecom, Ask Computer Systems, Teledex and Tri-Data Corporation and consulted on H.R. philosophy, values and infrastructure with many start-ups as well. Cher has managed several of these firms through rapid expansion and significant organizational challenges. While at Applied Materials, she led her business unit as the company grew from 6,000 to 16,000 employees in three years. Ms. Forman has specific expertise in employment, corporate legal compliance, development of cost effective compensation/benefit strategies, organization development and international HR management. She has a degree in Organization Behavior from the University of San Francisco and has participated in advanced training at several other colleges and universities.
Dear Cher:
I was laid off last week as a part of a major downsizing by the company I worked for. To me it seems like most of those laid off were over 50. Should I organize a lawsuit based on age discrimination?Tony, Fremont, CA
Answer:
Dear Tony:
It's an automatic temptation, isn't it? You may have already spoken with others who agree to join you. Before you move forward, though, you should consider how difficult it can be to prove age discrimination, especially in a lay off situation.
Companies having financial difficulties usually put together a list of criteria they will use to determine who to lay off. Often those criteria may be based on salary expenses, retention of job skills critical to the next major product development, a decision to not support a product line that is no longer profitable, or something else that can affect a greater percentage of older employees. As long as the company can show they faithfully used the criteria agreed upon when selecting individual employees for layoff, and none of the criteria were specifically based on age, a court would likely support the outcome.
Consider this information based on what you know took place at your company, and if you still believe layoff selection was clearly based on age alone, get some advice from an attorney on what choices you may have to fight the layoff.
Good luck with this, Tony. In your next employment situation, be sure to support or initiate programs aimed at retaining valuable older workers. Without them, we lose corporate culture, process and practice memory.
Best, Cher
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