Dive Brief:

• Four former employees filed a lawsuit accusing both Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Hewlett Packard Inc. (HPI) of age discrimination, according to an eWEEK report. 
• The former employees claim HP singled out older workers when it laid off thousands of people both before and after its restructuring and split into two separate companies. 
• The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., claims the layoffs were part of a broader effort to make HP’s workforce younger.

Dive Insight:

If substantiated, the age discrimination charges could be serious for both companies. 

Since 2012, HP has laid off about 85,000 people, according to the report. The lawsuit claims the two companies have hired a "disproportionately large number of new employees under the age of 40 to replace employees aged 40 and older who were terminated."

The four plaintiffs were in their 50s and 60s when they were let go.

The plaintiffs say HP's Human Resources unit sent out written guidelines in 2013 stating that the company was requiring that 75% of outside hires be "early career" applicants.

The lawsuit also claims HP "adopted employment policies and implemented other programs that were designed to force HP’s older workers out of the company, so that younger workers could take their places," pointing to an early phased retirement program allegedly implemented in 2014 and 2016. The program encouraged workers over the age of 55 who had worked at HP for at least 10 years to "voluntarily" phase out their employment with HP

Both HPE and HPI deny they targeted older workers in their layoff decisions.