Obama Forgot to Fight Age Discrimination

January 25, 2015 by 7 Comments

“Obama will fight job discrimination for aging employees by strengthening the Age Discrimination in Employment Act … .”  Source: Blueprint for Change (2008)

I was surprised when I recently read that President Barack Obama pledged in 2008 to strengthen the nation’s primary law prohibiting age discrimination, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

Surprised because the ADEA is much weaker today than it was when Obama was running for President in 2008 . The ADEA was decimated by an adverse U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2009. Congress could have legislatively “fixed” the Court’s ruling but has failed to pass the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act for five years.  But I was most surprised because Obama himself is responsible for weakening the ADEA.

Obama signed an executive order in 2010 that allows federal agencies to discriminate against older workers by hiring “recent graduates” –  which is in direct contravention to the ADEA.  What message does it send to private employers when the U.S. government deems it appropriate to discriminate on the basis of age? Whether intended or not, Obama’s executive order serves as a green light for employers to engage in harmful, invidious age discrimination.

Meanwhile, Obama’s administration is in the process of planning a White House Conference on Aging this year . Organizers so far have completely ignored the unaddressed epidemic of age discrimination in the workplace that is catapulting older workers into chronic unemployment, low wage jobs and forced early “retirement.”

The Conference recently announced it is partnering with the AARP, the nation’s leading purveyor of supplemental Medicare health insurance, to co-sponsor five regional forums to hear from the public “on issues such as ensuring retirement security, promoting healthy aging, providing long-term services and support, and protecting older Americans from financial exploitation, abuse, and neglect.” Promote healthy aging?  Hmmm … Do you have supplemental Medicare health insurance?

Obama’s unfulfilled campaign promise points to yet another reason that the problem of age discrimination is so prevalent in America today. Older Americans have failed to effectively marshal their resources  to insure that their interests are not forgotten by politicians the day after the election.   In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama focused on young families and the middle class and failed to even mention issues of particular concern to older Americans,

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I explore the reasons that age discrimination is treated like a lesser offense when compared with discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.  I show that age discrimination is about perception, not reality.  It is about unfounded stereotypes and deep-seated animus. And it has a devastating impact on the health and welfare of older Americans.

 

 

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

Older Americans are Invisible in Obama’s Union

January 20, 2015 by 7 Comments

President Obama forgot something in his State of the Union address – the plight of older Americans.

He talked about a young couple who suffered through the recession but emerged victorious. He talked about middle class economics and helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change.  And all of that is good.  But he didn’t mention the other end of the spectrum, the millions of older Americans who are facing the specter of  poverty or near poverty in retirement.

Millions of Baby Boomers and Generation X’ers are facing an uncertain future. They don’t have the benefit of a traditional pension because private-sector defined benefit pensions were frozen or discontinued in the 1990s.  They were replaced with 401 (k) plans, which are financed by individual workers’ contributions. However, older workers could not save enough to finance a secure retirement in 401 (k) plans because of the recession and they don’t have enough time left in the workforce to rebound.  Meanwhile, they lost jobs,  investments, suffered housing foreclosures, and continue to face epidemic and unaddressed age discrimination in hiring.

Obama set forth a laudable program to establish paid family and sick leave, equal pay for women, two years of free community college, raising the minimum wage and helping veterans and military spouses find good jobs. All of these goals are worthy. But  the silence was deafening with respect to older Americans.

What about assuring older Americans that there will be no cuts in Social Security or Medicaid? How about pledging to address the problem of age discrimination in employment and promising that older Americans will share in the supposed new found prosperity?

In my new book, Betrayed: The Legalization of Age Discrimination in the Workplace, I write about the impending retirement crisis facing millions of Americans, particularly women and minorities.

According to a 2013 study by Economic Policy Institute  many of America’s 41 million seniors are just one bad economic shock away from significant material hardship. According to the study:

  • Nearly half (48.0 percent) of the elderly population is “economically vulnerable,” defined as having an income that is less than two times the supplemental poverty threshold (a poverty line more comprehensive than the traditional federal poverty line).1 This equates to roughly 19.9 million economically vulnerable seniors.
  • The older elderly—people age 80 and older—have a far higher rate of economic vulnerability (58.1 percent) than people age 65 to 79 (44.4 percent).
  • Women are 10.7 percentage points more likely to fall below two times the supplemental poverty threshold than men (52.6 versus 41.9 percent)
  • The majority of elderly blacks and Hispanics are economically vulnerable: 63.5 percent of blacks and 70.1 percent of Hispanics, age 65 and older, have incomes less than two times the supplemental poverty threshold. In comparison, 43.8 percent of whites are economically vulnerable.

Meanwhile the Employment Benefit Research Institute’s Retirement Readiness Ratings estimates that 41 to 43 percent of Americans are at risk of running out of money in retirement. The EBRI is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute based in Washington, DC, that focuses on health, savings, retirement, and economic security issues.

Obama’s State of the Union address is yet more evidence that older Americans are invisible in America today. No voice speaks on their behalf in the corridors of power and, as a result, their concerns appears to be ignored.

 

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

EEOC & Age Discrimination: Then and Now

February 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Chart going downWhen the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was 20 years old in 1987, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging sharply criticized the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for failing to enforce the ADEA.

What would  Senators Melcher, Heinz, Chiles, Chafee, et. al, say about the EEOC today?

The 1987 Senate  Committee blasted the EEOC in 1987 for, among other things, filing too few lawsuits and  hiring too few experienced staff to evaluated cases.

Today, there are fewer full-time staff members working at the EEOC than there were in 1987 during the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan (who was widely perceived to be hostile to civil rights).

There were 2,941 full-time employees working at the EEOC in 1987, compared to 2,505 in 2011.

And it appears the EEOC filed many more lawsuits in 1987 than it did last year.

Clarence Thomas, now a U.S.  Supreme Court Justice, was appointed to the EEOC in 1982 and was serving as its controversial chairperson in 1987.  Thomas  told the  Committee that the EEOC filed  526 actions in federal district courts in 1986. Of these, he said, a record 109 were lawsuits filed under the ADEA.  More than 25 percent of all cases filed in 1986 were class actions, said Thomas.  And  more than 40 percent of the class action lawsuits were age cases.

The EEOC recently reported that in fiscal year 2012 it filed only 122 lawsuits in federal court,  including 86 individual suits, 26 multiple-victim suits (with fewer than 20 victims) and 10 “systemic suits.”

Does lack of funding account for the paltry  number of lawsuits filed by the EEOC in 2012 compared to 1987?  No. The EEOC budget was $165,000 million in 1987 compared to $360,000 million in 2012.

The 1987 commitee generally was not satisfied with the EEOC’s performance. “It’s all well and good to have a strong bill on the record protecting the aged and preventing discrimination based on age in the work force but if the law isn’t enforced, then we haven’t got much,” said committee member John Chafee, then a senator from Rhode Island.

It appears that no one is criticizing the EEOC’s performance today.

Successor Committee

Interestingly, there is still a U.S. Senate Special  Committee on Aging in existance – though it  appears to lack the diligence of the 1987 committee.

Today’s Senate Select Committee on Aging does not mention the problem of age discrimination on its web page. Nor does it mention age discrimination as an issue of concern on its issue page. And it has no schedule listed for hearings in 2013.

The  issues of interest to the modern-day U.S. Senate Committee on Aging are elder abuse and fraud, long-term care, Social Security and Medicare, prescription drug costs and retirement security.

The Committee explains the retirement security problems this way: “Saving for retirement has shifted dramatically in recent decades, and seniors now increasingly face retirement with little money saved or little guaranteed income due to the shift away from traditional pension plans toward the 401(k) plan.

Of course, this explanation fails to acknowledge that many people over the age of 40 consider age discrimination to be a problem that has serious implications for retirement security.

In 2012, the EEOC received 22,857 complaints of age discrimination – 23 percent of  the 99,412 discrimination complaints it received that year.

According to a  report last year in  the New York Times, a “startling proportion” of older people report they’ve experienced discrimination –  63 percent –  in a study recently published in Research on Aging.  Age is the most commonly cited cause, followed by gender, race or ancestry, disabilities or appearance.

 Cases Harder to Win

Meanwhile, it is considerably more difficult today for older workers to win an age discrimination lawsuit, no matter how egregious the discrimination, because of a  decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,  Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., 557 U.S. 167 (U.S. 2009).

The Supreme Court held in Gross that a plaintiff in an age discrimination case must prove that  “but for” age discrimination, he or she would not have suffered the adverse job action (i.e. demotion, dismissal).   In most other types of discrimination, the plaintiff must only show the existence of age discrimination — not that it was the cause of the adverse action.

Interestingly, Supreme Court Justice Thomas, the first African-American to head the EEOC and to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court,  wrote the Gross  opinion.

Filed Under: DISPATCHES, EEOC Tagged With: , Clarence Thomas, , , , retirement security, Ronald Reagan, Sen. John Chafee, ,