A man stands near an IBM logo at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez
(Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday rejected former IBM Corp employees' claims that agreements they signed to arbitrate employment-related disputes are invalid, dealing another blow to workers seeking to join an age discrimination lawsuit against the company.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan said the fact that the agreements barred the workers from joining a proposed class action lawsuit against IBM did not strip them of any legal rights, and so the agreements were enforceable.
The 26 people who challenged the agreements claim IBM forced them out of their jobs in order to replace them with younger workers and compete with tech companies with younger workforces. All but two of them brought age bias claims against IBM in arbitration that were dismissed as untimely.
The plaintiffs sued last year to invalidate the agreements after a different Manhattan federal judge blocked them from joining a separate proposed class action filed in 2018 making the same claims against IBM because they had signed arbitration agreements.
New York-based IBM, which has denied engaging in discrimination, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. IBM has maintained that older workers were fired or left the company for various reasons and not because of discrimination.
Shannon Liss-Riordan of Lichten & Liss-Riordan, who represents the plaintiffs,...
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