Age discrimination is a tough one to win but can be
I'm pretty sure age discrimination was part of why 3 of the 4 people laid off from our team were mid to late 50s and only one was young and only one guy in his 50s was kept and the other two are either late 20s or early 30s. The older guy kept was the team leader and also had a very good rapport with the higher manager and made him look good in the US so that's why he was kept.
We don't have proof of course. However, it appears now, after speaking with some guys in India that were forced out at the same time (pressured to resign) that the guy who was our immediate manager and was under the upper group manager and was the replacement for our long time team manager (US guy and older -- I think just a year younger than me) who resigned (forced out) about two years ago who resigned (also more or less pressured to by the India manager) is playing both ends and the upper manager fully knows this and may even be involved. What I mean is that even when I was there they hired a lot of new people as contractors and they all came from one agency. Every opening was filled through that agency. I didn't realize it but some other guys did and the claim is that this manager owns or is a major partner and beneficiary of this agency that is supplying the contractors. Ie, the new manager in India who we got assigned to forced my immediate boss out and then hired his guy at the agency who then routes all the hiring requests through the agency. But they're both employees of the company. So there is a major conflict of interest and corruption. Supposedly they've gone on a huge hiring binge in India for this group, mostly contractors through this agency.
The people in India say this is normal India corruption and nothing can happen but the company made us take trainings every year about conflicts of interest and corruption and has hotlines for this to be reported. In the US. The US company won't turn an eye to this stuff as the company can be put in peril. So the plan is to get evidence that this manager has a major role and is a beneficiary of the work the contract agency does and then file a complaint with the company's corruption line (whistle blower line). trying to nail both of these managers. Not that it will help us directly or anything but it will be very satisfying.
AND, if we are successful I'm going to try and pursuit an "age discrimination" case based on the corruption and us old guys getting laid off to fund their budgets to hire contractors in their play both sides corruption. We'll see. It's a 1% chance type of thing but maybe we can get them to come to the table if we can tell a compelling enough story with all the evidence that comes from the corruption case.
I have a guy or two in India requesting government files on the contracting company to show who are signatories, and partners or beneficiaries or registered agents and all that sort of stuff. The company is not a corp or llc type but a "private partnership" so they're not in the government business database but their registrations would be at the "state" level. I do have their tax ID and other stuff which helps. We're working on getting that info, and any other info like emails from the company with the guy's name etc. Some people in India say they have seen such email addresses listed...
Thank goodness for ChatGPT. It's been helping me figure out how to fie requests for information etc in India and searching records for the people and their affiliations etc.
