A white man has filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging that he was terminated to accommodate the company’s diversity hiring initiatives.
According to Randall Dill, he was a highly regarded employee at IBM, cultivating relationships with the Pentagon and other major clients. Much to his dismay, Dill said he was terminated to make room for hiring more women and minorities.
According to a lawsuit filed in a Michigan US District Court on Wednesday, Dill’s superiors did not clearly explain his termination. Instead, they falsely claimed that he needed to generate more business, even though this was never part of his job.
IBM Faces Discrimination Lawsuit Over Diversity Hiring
The lawsuit says IBM’s managers sought to increase their bonuses by reducing the number of white and Asian male employees and hiring more women and minorities. Dill’s attorney, Gene Hamilton, a director at America First Legal (AFL), noted that these actions violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing,” as explained in a post by the US Department of Labor.
Like other major tech companies, IBM, nicknamed Big Blue, has a history of conducting mass layoffs. In 2019, the company terminated the employment of 1,700 employees. Last year, IBM announced plans to lay off 3,900 employees as part of asset divestments and a shortfall in its annual cash target.
Hamilton argues that many employers today make hiring and firing decisions based on “immutable characteristics” that Americans cannot change. He noted that “no one should be discriminated against based on their race or sex, and we are committed to vindicating our client’s rights in court.”
IBM, a $135 billion company headquartered in Armonk, New York, has dismissed the lawsuit as “baseless.” The lawsuit highlights the implementation of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Proponents of DEI initiatives argue that they contribute to increasing the representation of women and minorities in workplaces and educational institutions. On the other hand, critics suggest these policies often result in discrimination against straight white men, even when they are more qualified candidates.
Dill joined IBM in October 2016 as a senior managing consultant, working with the US Army and other long-term clients from his home in Muskegon, Michigan, located on the picturesque Lake Michigan shoreline.
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According to the 18-page complaint, he consistently received high marks in performance evaluations and earned praise at monthly meetings. The lawsuit claims Dill’s boss, Jay Zook, informed him in July 2023 that he was “not bringing in enough work” and placed him on a performance improvement plan (PIP).
This remark surprised Dill, who had only worked with existing IBM clients and had never been responsible for acquiring new business. Despite this, Dill attempted to secure a contract for the company. However, when he requested support, Zook told him, “You are on your own.” He was terminated in October 2023.
CEO’s Public Comments On DEI Hiring Pressures
Weeks after Dill’s termination, a video surfaced in which IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, disclosed that managers were facing pressure to fulfil DEI hiring quotas. “All executives in the company have to move forward by 1 percent on both underrepresented minorities … and gender,” Krishna said.
“That leads to a plus on [their] bonus. By the way, if you lose, you lose part of your bonus,” the top executive added. In a video from 2021 that has since been made public, Krishna stated that hiring managers needed to increase the number of women, Black individuals, and Hispanic employees at IBM to receive their bonuses.
He further noted that there were already sufficient white and Asian male employees within the company. The lawsuit says the performance improvement plans were a tactic employed by IBM managers to “quickly and cheaply” eliminate white male employees, such as Dill, allowing Zook and other executives to achieve more significant bonuses.
The suit says, “The quota system is tied to bonus compensation in such a way that it incentivised impermissible racial discrimination and disincentivised refusal to engage in such discrimination.”
Dill is seeking reinstatement, back pay, compensation for the “mental anguish” and “humiliation” he has experienced, and reimbursement of his legal costs. An IBM spokesperson told The Mail that “these allegations are baseless.”
“Neither race nor gender played any role in the decision to end this individual’s employment with IBM. Discrimination of any kind has absolutely no place at IBM; we do not use hiring quotas and never have.”
This is the second lawsuit AFL, a conservative legal action group, has filed against IBM. In May, a former sales chief sued IBM’s Red Hat subsidiary, alleging that he and 20 other white men were terminated during the company’s aggressive DEI initiative.
