AT&T’s alleged ageism
Employers must toe the line when furloughing
Employers should take note of a recent federal court ruling that invalidated a woman’s signed written agreement not to sue her former employer for age discrimination.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has ruled that a waiver prohibiting an age discrimination lawsuit that was signed by a former AT&T employee doesn’t pass legal muster.
Legal action has been launched against AT&T by Alison Ray under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Ms. Ray had been a sales director for seven years, covering the territory of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Ms. Ray was part of a group of people who had been let go in January 2018.
AT&T had the right to reduce its workforce, but the question was how the company picked which employees should get the ax. More to the point: Was the decision illegally based on age?
Furloughed employees were asked to sign a release — essentially an agreement not to sue — as a condition of receiving their severance benefits. Before they signed, however, Ms. Ray and the others were to be given by AT&T what boils down to an analysis of who was being let go and how they were chosen. This is required by law, the point of which is to give an employee the opportunity to look for a pattern of illegal age discrimination.
The judge determined that this analysis was worded so vaguely a typical person would be incapable of making an informed assessment. The judge ruled the waiver Ms. Ray signed was not valid. That meant she could sue. “(The information provided by AT&T) was not understandable to the average worker, and therefore failed to provide...sufficient information to assess whether she was being discriminated against because of her age,” he wrote in his decision.
AT&T has denied it engages in any discrimination ever. Whether Ms. Ray was a victim of age discrimination will be decided by a court, unless a settlement is reached beforehand.
This decision signals an important message to employers to toe the line when it comes to an employee’s rights. “Congress intended...the disclosure requirements to arm employees with enough information to make an informed decision whether to release any (age discrimination) claims against an employer,” the judge noted.
AT&T may not have been engaging in age discrimination in its furlough of employees last year but it cast itself in a suspicious light by failing to fully and clearly explain how the company chose the unfortunates who were to lose their positions.
Losing a job is bad. Tying someone’s severance to a release from a potential lawsuit is unpalatable, though legal. But failing to follow the letter of the law in explaining how and why is unacceptable.