HP, HPE discrimination case moves forward

The two Bay Area tech companies argue the basis for the suit is ‘tenuous’

A federal court judge in San Jose narrowed a lawsuit accusing HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise of purging older workers in favor of younger ones, but ruled that the case should proceed based on its central claims.

Three dozen former employees are suing the firms for age discrimination, claiming they were fired because they were older and the companies wanted a younger workforce.

Judge Edward Davila wrote in his ruling this week that the former workers claim internal HP documents from 2015 showed that “Baby Boomers” were considered “undesirable” while millennials were seen as “highly desirable.”

The plaintiffs allege that Palo Alto-based HP and San Jose-headquartered Hewlett Packard Enterprise — the two companies that resulted from Hewlett-Packard splitting in 2015 — both used the same process and paperwork for restructuring their workforces.

In his ruling Monday, Davila noted that the former employees allege Meg Whitman, a former CEO at both companies, had said publicly that HP was working “very hard” to ensure it had a “whole host of young people” at the base of its “labor pyramid” and that HP was “amping up” early-career and college hiring.

“Meanwhile, according to Plaintiffs, HP was terminating thousands of existing employees,” Davila wrote.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but argued in a February court filing that the case is based on Whitman’s comments about restructuring the workforce, and that asserting employees were turfed because of their age represents “the most tenuous of inferences.”

Hewlett-Packard began layoffs in 2012, saying it would cut 27,000 jobs, before the company broke into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Ultimately,

tens of thousands of employees were terminated. The goal of the layoffs was to “make the company younger,” according to allegations in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose in 2016. “In order to get younger, HP intentionally discriminated against its older employees by targeting them for termination … and then systematically replacing them with younger employees,” the suit claimed. “HP has hired a disproportionately large number of new employees under the age of 40 to replace employees aged 40 and older who were terminated.”

The lawsuit alleges that HP’s human resources department in 2013 issued written guidelines mandating that 75 percent of all external hires should be fresh from school or “early career” applicants, and that an “overwhelming majority” of people hired by HP entities were in their 20s and 30s.

In his ruling Monday, Davila noted that the plaintiffs allege that HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise both used the same process and paperwork for restructuring their workforces.

The lawsuit was first filed by two former employees let go from the companies at ages 62 and 63. The legal action was later joined by four other former workers, including Arun Vatturi, a 15-year Palo Alto employee at HP who was a director in process improvement until he was laid off in 2016 at age 52, and Sidney Staton, in sales at HP in Palo Alto for 16 months until his layoff in 2015 at age 54. Thirty more former employees have opted into the suit. The plaintiffs claim that hundreds if not thousands of former workers for the companies were let go at age 40 or older to make way for younger people.

However, Davila ruled that the plaintiffs had not shown that HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise were an “integrated enterprise” and “knew about each other’s discriminatory conduct.” He granted the companies’ motion to dismiss claims against HP by former Hewlett Packard Enterprise workers and claims against Hewlett Packard Enterprise by former HP workers.