--Arthur Schopenhauer
1858 Days and Still Counting
On February 12th, 2021, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a Determination letter with a legal finding that Intel Corp. systematically violated Civil Rights of its employees. The finding was issued in conjunction with the 2015 layoffs action in which 1,155 employees were permanently laid off, in addition to several hundred additional employees and managers who were forced to accept early retirement.
It took the EEOC, a U.S. Federal law-enforcement agency, more than 5 years (61 months) to issue its Determination Letter to both Intel Corporation and the affected employees, who were laid off in 2015.
What did the EEOC do during the 1858 days, since a formal complaint against Intel Corporation was officially filed with the EEOC?
The official position of the EEOC is that it is "working with the Employer". What does it mean? A law enforcement agency of the U.S. Government collaborating with a Civil Rights law violator?
Note that according to U.S. Federal law 29 C.F.R. § 1601.6(a). The
EEOC field office can request issuance of a Commissioner charge for
inquiries that relate to individual or systemic discrimination. A
Commissioner also may file a charge without receiving a referral from a
field office.
Are we facing yet another case of "Corporate Welfare" program where a U.S. Government agency is hiding from the public the ability to examine and understand the substantial systemic Civil Rights violations facts of the case? Is this a case where a corporation such as Intel Corp. gets immunity from prosecution or from exposure to public scrutiny, just because of its monetary wealth and Washington D.C. lobbying powers?
Note that the EEOC already found Intel Corp. guilty of multiple violations of the ADEA as evidenced by multiple, official legal determination letters, issued by the EEOC. After more than six years of process, what prevents the EEOC from filing its own law suit against Intel Corp. and by doing so deterring bad actors from further violations, in addition to recouping the cost of litigation from a serial law violator?
The Human Capital Factor
The Intel July 2015 layoff was the first step of a strategy, conceived by then Intel CEO Brian Krzanich (BK), to replace aging employees with younger and much cheaper newcomers. For Intel Corp., this layoff also marked the beginning of a five year spiraling down series of manufacturing failures resulting in the company losing its leading position in the semiconductor industry to multiple competitors.
Less than a year later, (March-April 2016) Intel Corp., upped the ante and laid off additional 12,000 employees, most of them very experienced. In spite of the oddity and timing of these subsequent "reductions in workforce" (RIF) actions, the consequences of the massive layoffs were not immediately apparent at the time that they occurred.
However, in reality, by ridding itself of experienced employees Intel Corp. lost the ability to execute the reliable High Volume Manufacturing processes (HVM), which the company excelled at for many years in the past. Successful execution of HVM is the "make-or-break life blood" of all chip factories (commonly known as FABs).
You can refer to a previously published article on our website for further reference about Intel Corp. strategy for replacing its (older) experienced workforce with younger and cheaper replacements.
See:
Useful diagrams for explaining Intel Corp selection of employees for termination in 2015 and 2016
Although the EEOC in its official capacity is charged with monitoring for employers' discriminatory behavior on a continuous basis, the EEOC claims that it was not aware of the employee discrimination cases until one of Intel Corp. employees, who were affected by the layoffs, presented the Commission with indisputable evidence of systemic wrongdoing.
Ron Tsur delivering presentation at Intel technical conference during Summer 2015 |
The individual who brought the EEOC's attention to Intel Corp. systemic law violations is Ron Tsur, who prior to being laid off by Intel Corp., held the position of Principal Software Architect for Intel Corp. Electrical Validation Enabling Department.
Note that although Mr. Tsur's case is highlighted here in greater detail, his age discrimination case and the facts that support the legal case charges against Intel Corp. represents a group of an estimated 2000 similar cases.
Mr. Tsur case is an exception only from the perspective that his pursuit of bringing Intel Corp. to justice took place in the open since 2015 and endured relentlessly, through the last seven years.
***
April 30, 2021 UPDATE
"The Register" news outlet published an online article covering Mr. Tsur recent Federal Court lawsuit filing.
(See: Intel laid me off for being too old, engineer claims in lawsuit).
***
Prior to his inclusion in the July 2015 mass layoff, Mr. Tsur worked at a corporate-level department with responsibility for validating, qualifying and certifying leading-edge (newly designed R&D prototype) computer chips, during the critical preliminary evaluation phase, preceding the silicon designs move into High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) at Intel Corp. FABs.
Note that HVM process execution with terrible failure rate is exactly what Intel Corp. is experiencing for the last six years.
Is there a correlation between the 2015 layoffs of approximately 1200 experienced employees, the "follow on" layoff of 12,000 employees in 2016, and the subsequent Intel Corp. consistent series of manufacturing blunders? Coincidence?
Back in mid 2015, Mr. Tsur and his supervisors were shocked at the company HR decision to lay-off Mr. Tsur from his job as part of the mass layoff. To Mr. Tsur and his management chain, the layoff notice seemed at first as an "administrative error". Nothing made much sense in the way that the company presented either the reasons for the layoffs or the way in which employees were selected for "termination".
More specifically, Intel Corp. HR mandated layoff edict was particularly puzzling to both Mr. Tsur and his management chain. This is to a great extent because Mr. Tsur at the time, led a major strategic effort to develop advanced testing and analysis methods that would enable the company to focus on identifying the root cause of the endlessly repeating new chip failures, found during internal validation and testing of the (then) new 14nm silicon manufacturing process.
During 2014 and 2015, Mr. Tsur, being the principal Systems Software Architect within the Intel Corporation Electrical Validation Tools and Enabling department, was leading, defining, architecting and prototyping, modern data analysis solutions that were aimed at significantly upgrading the capabilities of Intel Corp. (outdated, 20th Century legacy) chip electrical test methodologies. Mr. Tsur and his collaborators focused among other novel approaches, on the collection of real-time electrical behavioral data, directly from Intel Corporation customer's (OEM) product prototypes, using "big data" analysis. Other advanced techniques included deploying machine learning tools to establish cause/effect relationship, by using advanced "semantics-based" data collection methods.
The goal of Mr. Tsur's leading initiative was to utilize high volume, data-driven, testing and rapid failure analysis methodologies, taking advantage of recent 21st Century data collection and analysis capabilities. This approach was among other things, focused towards eliminating tens of thousands of man-hours that were otherwise, spent on manual fact finding and (slow) manual analysis. Mr. Tsur lead initiative was directed at increasing the efficiency of the electrical validation process, thereby saving the company tens of million dollars each year in engineering work hours. Mr. Tsur also lead the development of a "unified, semantics-rich" hierarchical-data framework, aimed at removal of ambiguities and uncertainties from the manufacturing-tests data sets. This capability was a key component for enabling quick turn-around of chip manufacturing process corrections.
Mr. Tsur did not operate in vacuum, his R&D "path finding" projects were initiated after it became apparent to Intel Corporation Electrical validation Department staff (in 2014), that the new 14nm and 10nm based silicon designs presented significantly new reliability testing and manufacturing challenges, necessitating radically new methodologies and novel problem solving approach.
Intel Corp. High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) Problems Connection to the Human Capital Factor
As mentioned above, immediately prior to his inclusion in the 2015 mass layoff, Mr. Tsur's department at Intel Corp. was focused at enabling the company to effectively identify the possible nature and root cause of the HVM problems that plagued the 14nm and upcoming 10nm manufacturing processes.
Note that electrical validation work is routinely conducted during the R&D and early manufacturing phases of every company new silicon product, not only at Intel Corporation. However, Intel Corporation (quite smartly) provided early prototype samples of future chip products to its network of OEM customers, such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Etc., as "engineering Samples", subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Early exposure to even partially functional new chips, is very helpful policy for enabling the OEM design engineers with a "head start" to better evaluate and understand new product features, adopt better system integration doctrines and thereby cut down market readiness of their final consumer products.
However, in early 2014, significant "Head-Start" failures of silicon engineering samples produced an alarming warning signal with OEMs who began to seriously suspecting Intel Corp. ability to deliver promised new silicon chips for OEM new line of products, using the 14nm silicon manufacturing process.
Today, after more than seven years of repeating HVM manufacturing blunders, this multi-year series of failures is already a well established historic fact. Intel Corp. excuses for its inability to overcome its production quality problems, continued for long time to be presented as "technical in nature". The corporate PR machine was apparently, operating at full steam, hiding the human factors associated with Intel Corp. failure to deliver reliable silicon chips to its customers.
In particular, the long-term effects that the 2015 and 2016 massive employee layoffs inflicted on Intel Corp. internal organization and its ability to execute and produce were either ignored or shoved under the carpet, in order to keep company stock and bond investors at bay.
Intel Corp. Executives Ulterior Motives
In spite of his management chain's protests to the HR department, highlighting the potential damage caused by ridding Mr. Tsur expertise from the company, the layoff process inertia dominated the scene and subsequently, Mr. Tsur was laid off in mid-July 2015, alongside approx. 1200 of his peers.
It is not very clear if Intel Corporation actually gained a lot by firing 1155 of its experienced employees during July 2015. Today it is quite apparent that Intel Corp. executive management in 2015, did not consider their own experienced employees, as tangible assets.
It has become apparent that CEO Brian Krazanich and his executive team viewed all employees as an easily replaceable "commodity". "Shopping for Employees" was viewed, not unlike shopping for toilette paper or paper clips, Krzanich and his cronies, apparently believed that that junior candidates and lowest bidders could successfully displace their mature "human capital". Highly experienced employees no longer counted as the core "asset" of the company. This represented a major departure from the heydays of Intel Corporation, under the leadership of its late Co-founder, Dr. Andrew Grove, who expressed on many occasions that Intel Employees are the Principal Asset of the company.
As Dr.Ian Cutress recently wrote on his popular AnandTech blog:
ex-Intel engineers have a long line of accolades at the company, having worked on and built the fundamental technologies that power Intel today. The exact reasons why they left Intel in the first place are varied, with some peers are keen to cite brain drain during CEO Brian Krzanich’s tenure
Kraznich and his top executives zealot efforts to drive the company stock to a higher value by ridding the company from a large number of older employees, were apparently never properly scrutinized for possible negative consequences, by the company board of directors. Perhaps, they were even encouraged by the Board. For reasons that have never been explained by Intel Corporation the permanent layoff of Mr. Tsur and many of his colleagues was never given a fair HR legal review or a chance of appeal, as required by documented HR procedures. The Intel Employee Handbook, specifically spells the right of any employee to question, rebuttal and appeal management decisions, including employment termination, via formal hearing, known as "Open Door". Intel Corporation violated its own HR "checks and balances" procedures by blocking all venues for Mr. Tsur and his management chain to represent their facts, in support of reversing Mr. Tsur's layoff. Intel Corp. executive management was apparently not interested in what is good for the company's future, as much as what is good for getting their bonuses, due to expected favorable stock market reaction to the massive layoffs.
Although "Open Door" appeals hearings during 2015, were openly well documented in the company's HR Employee Handbook, the HR department blatantly violated its own rules. Since the Intel HR Employee Handbook is part of the employment contract between the company and its employees, in addition to issues of State and Federal Civil Rights violations, a violation of private sector employment terms, also constitutes breach of contract.
In 2015, Mr. Tsur was informed by an HR Legal Investigator that direct orders from Intel Corp. CEO and its executive management committee, (internally known as MCM) instructed the HR Legal department to block any such investigation or hearing at the very moment that selected employees were issued the 30 day termination notice.
Curiously, some other employees, younger than Mr. Tsur, were granted "open Door" hearings and some of them, actually received a reversal of their layoff order. Others were given a chance to convert their involuntary layoff into forced (involuntary) "early retirement", in return for some perks, conditioned on keeping the terms of their separation, silent and hidden from public exposure.
Age Discrimination Statistical Evidence
While still serving at the Jones Farm campus of Intel Corporation in Hillsboro, Oregon, after receiving his a 30 day termination notice prior to his layoff in July 2015, Mr. Tsur (62 years old at the time) who among other things, is also an experienced data scientist, examined the content of the 2015 layoffs report that was issue to him along with 1200 other employees, as part of their layoff notice.
[Note: the referenced report is a Federally mandated document, known as OWBPA, specifying the company job categories, and the ages of employees selected for layoff, vs. those who were excluded from layoff]
Upon scrutiny of the facts, Mr. Tsur discovered from his data analysis of the OBWBPA report, a very conspicuous correlation between an affected (selected to be laid off) employee age and the probability of such employee to be laid off.
Mr. Tsur's conclusions regarding the apparent age discrimination "disparate impact" present in the 2015 layoffs, were independently affirmed a few weeks later, when the Oregonian news outlet ran an independent analysis of the OWBPA Report. The OregonianLive, published an article, written by Mike Rogoway, highlighting the overwhelming age-related correlation manifested at the core of the 2015 layoffs, as demonstrated in the chart below.
The Whistleblower Case
Important Notes
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
The National Security Farce
(click on image to enlarge detail)
- Dalian, China - FAB Production Site
- Shanghai, China - assembly and test site
- Chengdu, China - assembly and test site
- San Jose, Costa Rica
- Kulim, Malaysia
- Penang, Malaysia
- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Suggested Corrective Actions
- Age discrimination: Intel investigation drags on for years, worker protections lag
- Feds Say Intel Discriminated Against Older Workers in 2015 Layoffs
- How Boeing Was Set on the Path to Disaster by the Cult of Jack Welch
- The economic impact of ageism
- Does America Want a CHIPS for Buybacks Act?
- Intel Continues to Rehire Veterans: At Some Point They’ll Run Out
- With CHIPS Act, US Risks Building a White Elephant