There Is No Protection For Age Discrimination

[TheMastersNemesis]

In fact there is no protection against age discrimination and here is why. For one there are no longer enough staff to investigate this epidemic. Secondly, it is just about impossible to prove age discrimination because of the way the law is designed. Thirdly, the penalties are virtually non existent. Plus Bush left a lot of his people in all of these agencies. He had 8 years to stack them with anti government Republicans.

To win an age discrimination suit you have to prove a PATTERN of discrimination. To do that you have to have the hiring records of the business or corporation in order to show a pattern. Good luck, those files are owned by the company being investigated. Also age discrimination has be a class action to have a chance to succeed. Lawyers are reluctant to take age cases because there is no money in it.

The situation leaves businesses the opportunity to discriminate at will as much as they want.

Now if age discrimination were under the Affirmative Action law, then the businesses would be required to show their records and prove they ARE NOT discriminating. Now you see why the GOP wants to abolish that law. And in the case that companies are out of compliance, then the feds assign a compliance officer to oversee their personnel department.

When I worked at DOL I would get calls from employers asking me to look for a certain class of worker because the fed overseer was monitoring who they were hiring and ordering them to hire a certain class of worker they did not have.

If you think you have employment rights wake up. You do not have any in actuality. The feds are able to only enforce the very large cases.

PS A lot of states are "work at will". Either party can end employment. The employer has all the cards. And a cause of termination does not necessarily have to be given.

[99Forever]

1. Ok. You've named the problem.

Many of us in our mid to late 50s are more than aware of it. We are virtually unhireable in this economy.

Do you have any proposals as to what we can do? I've written more letters to "my" trusted government about it than I can count to every office and person I can think of. Other than a form letter "thanks for your concern" I get nothing. Nadda. Zip. And that's from BOTH sides of the aisle. Not a single one of them gives shit about us, unless it's to try and hit us up for a contribution.

So, what's your plan, if it's good, I'm in.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. I Really Do Not Have An Answer

The answer to the problem is not a short term on unfortunately. The only way is to get pro labor and pro worker politicians in office. There are no active organizations for older workers that I know of. AARP turned out to be a bust because it acts like a business and has not really supported seniors unless it can make money off of it.

There are no easy answer because the GOP and big business have now so mangled the labor and employment landscape. They pretty much demolished the social contract that used to exist before Reagan. Until the public wakes up about the need for all workers' rights nothing will change. The antigovernment and anti regulation meme has cowed the public into disarming the one entity that had the clout to protect workers. That was and still is the federal government.

All this clap trap about getting the government off YOUR back has been the biggest scam in the last 32 years. When I talk to young people I tell them that they will have to fight for restoration of the "social contract" between workers and employers. I specifically tell them to look up Teddy Roosevelt's speech on "Social Justice" and "FDR's Second Bill Of Rights" on Youtube. What Teddy and FDR said should be a demand of all workers in the US and elsewhere.

Their view will be called communistic but that is too damned bad. Those demands must be made anyway. Romney's attack on being like Europe is a code attack on "workers' rights that still exist in many European countries.

I realize that I am not giving much hope here short term. But the GOP has been dismantling things for 32 years now. Getting rid of older workers aggressively began during Reagan's first term and has accelerated since. I know that because I was at DOL and was interviewing scores of 50 plus somethings who were being laid off.

I am sad for your predicament. The only way I see now is to revolt against the GOP's and big businesses' free market and trickle down economics by voting against the money and GOP candidates. The reason why Democrats are so skittish is when they run on pro labor or pro worker platforms locally they get smoked. People won't vote for them. So they feel they have to move to the right.

Conservatism has brought us to this point. I have spent 32 years intensely following these trends and who has been behind them. The general public is too uninformed about how they have been lied to. I saw this coming 32 years ago and am really dumbfounded that the American people were so successfully manipulated.

The thing is that corporations do not want anyone older than 42 because actuary studies show that a worker is no longer a plus economically after that age. With R&R in power all labor laws will disappear if they have Congress too. And age discrimination is just another one of those pesky regulations.

And if you are under 55 R & R will kill your Social Security and Medicare. They are lying about reforming it. Given the chance they will just shut it down for every one even over 55 too. Period.