EEOC Snubs Age Discrimination – Again

November 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
EEOC Snubs Age Discrimination – Again

Yet again, the EEOC in 2014 devoted a disproportionately small percentage of its resources toward litigating age discrimination complaints.

The EEOC filed 133 merits lawsuits during FY 2014, compared to 131 in 2013 and 378 a decade ago. Merits lawsuits include direct suits and interventions by the EEOC alleging violations of the substantive provisions of federal discrimination laws as well as suits to enforce administrative settlements.  Of the merits lawsuits filed by the EEOC in 2014:

  • 76 contained Title VII claims
  • 49 contained Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claims;
  • 12 contained Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) claims;
  • two contained Equal Pay Act (EPA) claims;
  • two contained Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) claims.

* Note – some suits have multiple claims.

So about eight percent of  the claims in merit lawsuits filed by the  EEOC in 2014 involved age discrimination. Typically, age discrimination complaints represent at least 20 percent of all EEOC complaints. If this holds true in 2014 – the EEOC has not released these statistics yet – the EEOC will have  devoted a disproportionately small share of its resources to litigating age discrimination claims. The EEOC filed seven merits lawsuits with age discrimination claims in 2013.

In my new book Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I show that the odds are heavily stacked against employment discrimination victims in federal courts, and particularly age discrimination victims, who start out with a higher burden of proof. The vast majority of age discrimination claims are summarily dismissed by judges. I also argue that age discrimination is epidemic in American society because Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 fails to protect older workers and the EEOC has virtually ignored the problem.

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Filed Under: AGE DISCRIMINATION, DISPATCHES Tagged With:

The Lack of Equal Justice for All

October 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment

There was an article in the New York Times recently about the elusiveness of justice for African-Americans in the criminal justice system.

This obviously reflects ingrained racism but it is also a symptom of a wider problem – the lack of equal justice for the poor and the middle class in America.

The leadership of our nation’s civil and criminal justice system, the U.S. Supreme Court, does not serve as a role model for equal justice for all. And the U.S. Congress, which holds the power of the purse-strings over the judicial branch, provides no discernible oversight as to how the court system spends taxpayer money.

An egregious example of the wider problem is  the U.S. Supreme Court‘s refusal to allow its proceedings to be broadcast. This is really an issue about transparency and accountability.  The leadership of the third branch of government in the world’s leading democracy has chosen not to be transparent and or accountable. And if you don’t like it, tough!

The Court’s disdainful attitude toward the American public was not acceptable after television attained broad popularity fifty years ago and it is completely unacceptable in the Internet age. The Court exists to serve the public, not the Court.  This doesn’t mean the Court is subject to the whims of the majority but that the Court must be guided by founding American principles of equality and justice for all.

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I focus on the civil justice system, which  has utterly failed to protect older workers from irrational and harmful age discrimination. This is particularly true for vulnerable older workers (i.e. minorities and women).

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 was weak to begin with and has been eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has made it almost impossible to win a federal age discrimination lawsuit. Age discrimination has become normalized in American society and is trickling down to ever younger workers (i.e., the youth apartheid state of Silicon Valley).  But younger workers have years to rebound, while older workers often are plunged into a penurious old age of deprivation.

I suggest the judiciary create a special federal court to hear appeals in  discrimination cases. This court could be staffed with federal judges who are both educated in and dedicated to the concept of equal justice. This court would not be limited to age discrimination but would decide appeals in all cases alleging discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation and disability, etc.

Age discrimination represents a kind of government subsidy for employers, by allowing them to replace more expensive older workers with cheap young labor. Taxpayers  pick up the tab in the form of higher social welfare costs, including health care and Social Security benefits.  I doubt that most taxpayers would want to pay this subsidy if they knew they were paying it.

Filed Under: AGE DISCRIMINATION, DISPATCHES, EEOC, U.S. SUPREME COURT Tagged With: , ,

WANTED: Advocacy Group to Help Older Workers

October 6, 2014 by 1 Comment

The Time For Action is Long Overdue

What advocacy group exists today to fight age discrimination in the workplace?

My first thought was the AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, which has an estimated 37 million members. The AARP is said to be one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. But it is in the business of selling health insurance to retired people, not equality in the workplace.

The AARP has a non-profit foundation that exists to advocate for older Americans. It says it helps “struggling seniors by being a force for change on the most serious issues they face today.” The web site of the AARP Foundation has lots of opportunities to “donate today” and “ways to give.” It claims to be “a voice and an advocate.” Here are the articles under “AARP Foundation in the News”  on Oct. 6, 2014:

  • How to manage your money better after 50.
  • The people of Haiti thank AARP members.
  • AARP Foundation invites NASCAR fans to ‘Ride with Jeff.”
  • Couples say relationships benefit from volunteering together..

Considering the serious issues facing older workers today, this is the equivalent of marshmallow fluff on burnt toast.  Efforts to reach Foundation President Lisa Marsh Ryerson and other Foundation officials through their web site were unsuccessful.

Who Cares?

Who advocates for older workers who are unemployed, floundering in long-term unemployment, and working in poorly-paid part-time jobs with no benefits? Research shows that millions of older workers have been forced into a penurious early retirement since the Great Recession because they can’t get jobs.  This hasn’t stopped Congress from debating cuts to Social Security. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has virtually ignored a record increase in age discrimination complaints. Despite receiving more than 20,000 complaints in 2013, the EEOC filed only a handful of lawsuits with age discrimination claims.

The thesis of my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, is that the major U.S. law prohibiting age discrimination was weak to begin with and has been eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court. There is no question that older workers are literally treated like second class citizens in our nation’s court system. Who cares?

The AARP Foundation has a legal arm that files friend of the court briefs and purportedly represents plaintiffs in age discrimination lawsuits.  However, the problems facing older workers will not be resolved in the federal courts, which are demonstrably hostile to all employment discrimination lawsuits.

Older Americans must demand their representatives in the U.S. Congress address the epidemic of age discrimination.  For five years, Congress has failed even to pass the Protection Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which would merely eliminate one of the many in the ADEA compared to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin and religion. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 issued a mean-spirited and unnecessary decision requiring  older workers to meet a much higher level of proof in age discrimination cases than exists for discrimination victims who file claims under Title VII.  No one has put forth any credible justification for treating age discrimination victims worse than other discrimination victims. The failure of Congress to address this harmful injustice also reflects the lack of an effective advocacy groups for older workers.

One would have hoped that our nation’s first African-American president, Barack H. Obama, would show some sensitivity to the problem of age discrimination. He made the problem incrementally worse when he signed an executive order in 2010 that permits government agencies to bypass older workers in favor of hiring younger workers. The justification for this program is that the government was incapable of competing with the private sector for younger workers during the worst recession in 100 years.  Really?

What American workers need  now is an advocacy group that will lobby the U.S. Congress to restore their rights.  We need an organization that has a strategy and a plan to create positive change.  If the AARP Foundation wants to continue to collect money to advocate for the rights of older workers, individuals and grant organizations should demand  action on Capital Hill.  If this is too uncomfortable for the offspring of a behemoth medical sales organization, then we need a new organization that is willing to do the job.

Filed Under: AGE DISCRIMINATION, DISPATCHES Tagged With: , , Lisa Marsh Ryerson, Social Security

The EEOC, Age & the Great Recession

September 22, 2014 by 3 Comments

The Great Recession hit older workers like a baseball bat.

Older workers were fired and laid off, dumped nto a sea of long-term unemployment, poorly-paid temp or part-time work and into an ill-advised early retirement. Many have not recovered and never will.

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination, I write that a record number of age discrimination complaints were filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) during the recession. The agency did little to respond to the precipitous upswing in age discrimination complaints and has continued to  ignore the problem. I note that in 2013 the EEOC received more than 21,000 complaints of age discrimination but filed only seven lawsuits with age discrimination claims. The book was published in late August.

I was pleased to read an announcement by the  EEOC  on Monday that the agency had settled an age discirmination lawsuit that it filed on September 15 against DSW Inc., a national shoe retailer which allegedly unfairly fired older workers from 2008 -2009.  The agency said DSW had agreed to pay $900,000 in monetary relief to seven former managers and about 100 other former employees. If split evenly, that works out to approximately $8,400 per age discrmination victim. The settlement also requries DSW to report any future employee complaints of age discrimination to the EEOC for the next three years and to revise its anti-discrimination policy.

DSW, which is based in Columbus, Ohio,  allegedly used a common tactic to get rid of older workers during periods of economic turmoil. The EEOC alleged that DSW used a “reduction in force”  to fire the older workers, and then retaliated against employees who refused to fire other workers based on their age.

DSW issued a statement in which it denied engaging in age discrimination, insisting it settled the case to avoid the costs of litigation. “Those difficult decisions were driven by economic volatility and were in no way influenced by the age of associates,” the company said.

Charges filed with the EEOC under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act have increased about 36 percent since 1997, from 15,785 to 21,396. The number of complaints reached an all-time high of 24,582 in 2008.

The case, EEOC v. DSW Inc., Civil Action No. 14-cv-07153, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

 

Filed Under: AGE DISCRIMINATION, DISPATCHES, EEOC Tagged With: , ,