Hewlett Packard and an associated company — both heavy users of H-1B workers — have agreed to settle an age discrimination class action suit for $18 million.
The case took so long to reach a conclusion, 11 years — some delaying motions by the defense lawyers perhaps? — that the main plaintiff, Donna Forsyth (probably a non-H-1B) died before the settlement was reached. A manager, she was laid off at the age of 62 back in 2012. She would be 73 had she been alive for the settlement. Presumably her share of the settlement (something not disclosed) will go to her heirs.
HP and its spinoff, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, dominate computer printer sales; the reader may have one on her or his desk, as I do. In the last couple of years, HP and its spinoff, have each annually sought about 500 H-1B workers in the H-1B process, and have presumably secured about one third of that number each year in the DHS lotteries.
The steady flow of 150 new and young H-1Bs each year, to each firm, gives them the replacements that the firms “need” to fill in for the older workers that were furloughed, a subject not mentioned in the Mercury-News coverage linked above.
What do we know about the hiring-by-age practices of the H-1B industry? The Department of Homeland Security keeps tabs on what the industry does in this field, but presents data in such a way as to discourage thought on the subject, as the figure below from the annual report on the “Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers” shows.
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Does any reader remember working at a job in which less than 1 percent of the workers were women over 45? Maybe an agency for fashion models? The department carefully does not show us how the age and gender distribution in the H-1B business compares to the American norm; instead it shows the percentage by age group and sex, with all the bars adding up to 100 percent of the H-1B workforce. (I know that this is an obscure statistical critique.)
Similarly, how many of us have had civilian jobs in which only 3 percent of the workers were males over 45?
Although one arm of the government reports on the age (and gender) discrimination in this program, other arms do nothing about it.