May 12 (Bloomberg) — For at least a decade, International Business Machines Corp. gave fired employees information detailing a severance package that asked them to waive age-discrimination claims and also included a page listing the job titles and ages of workers being let go.

This disclosure helps fired employees determine if they have an age-discrimination case, and it's required by U.S. federal law for workers over 40 if a company wants the person to agree not to file such a lawsuit. Now IBM is withholding the information, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It's avoiding the disclosure requirement by offering workers the option of bringing claims in arbitration.

Although employees are now able to accept a severance agreement and maintain their ability to bring an age- discrimination claim in arbitration, the strategy could make it harder and riskier for dismissed older employees to decide whether it's worth taking on the cost of a legal battle, lawyers and labor law experts say. And many older workers are already feeling vulnerable in a still anemic economic recovery, said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank affiliated with labor. IBM, considered a pioneer in employee benefits, may be one of the first major companies to make these changes in severance agreements.