Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sued over allegations the rocket company discriminates against older workers

• Two people have sued Blue Origin over age discrimination claims, TechCrunch first reported.
• A former engineer said he was told to seek out younger hires, according to a September lawsuit.

Two people have sued Blue Origin over the past year claiming the company discriminates against older workers, according to a recent report from TechCrunch.

Last September, a former aerospace software engineer at Blue Origin, Cristian Bureriu, filed a lawsuit against Jeff Bezos' rocket company that claimed he had been told by his supervisor to seek out younger candidates to hire because "younger guys are more coachable," according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court that was viewed by Insider.

Bureriu said in his complaint that during the over three years he worked at Blue Origin, the company "forced out" about 20 employees who were over the age of 40 and replaced them with individuals who were in their 20s and 30s. The engineer alleged that he faced harassment and retaliation and was wrongfully terminated after he reported the issue to human resources, as well as took a medical leave of absence and requested special accommodations to continue working from home instead of going into Blue Origin's Kent, Washington facility, the complaint said.

A spokesperson for Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment from Insider and the case was moved into private arbitration in December.

Bureriu's complaint of age discrimination is echoed in a second lawsuit against the company, TechCrunch reported. In January, a lawsuit filed on behalf of David Rowan said that Bureriu's allegations "present a convincing mosaic of circumstantial evidence which supports a finding of intentional age discrimination" at Blue Origin, according to TechCrunch.

In his complaint, Rowan alleges that over the span of two years he applied for 14 different positions at the company and never received a job offer, TechCrunch reported. He claims that Blue Origin asked him questions to determine his age during the interview process, the publication said, citing Rowan's complaint.

Insider previously reported that Blue Origin's hiring process includes an essay on human spaceflight and a 5-hour interview panel.

It's not the first time that Blue Origin has faced criticism from a former employee. In 2021, Alexandra Abrams, the former head of Blue Origin employee communications, published an open letter alongside a group describing itself as 21 former and current Blue Origin employees. In the letter, Abrams and others accused Blue Origin of fostering a sexist work culture and sacrificing safety in order to win the billionaire space race.

At the time, a Blue Origin representative told Insider the company doesn't tolerate harassment and would investigate the claims. The company said that Abrams was dismissed after repeated warnings regarding federal export-control regulations, though Abrams told CBS she never received the warnings.

"We stand by our safety record and believe that New Shepard is the safest space vehicle ever designed or built," the spokesperson said at the time.

Since the company launched its first human mission in July of 2021, which flew Bezos and three others to the edge of space, the company has faced some setbacks. The company's New Shepherd space tourism capsule has been grounded for months after its escape hatch launched in error last September.

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