Corporations, Age Discrimination and the American Way

[Kmarx]

Take the time and read: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20050615 especially if you expect to live long enough to not be able to retire. For this we can thank nitwit in the White House, his coldblooded, psychopathic, war mongering second in command, corporate butt kissing Republicans, useless Democrats, and let's not forget the dumb yahoos who voted for dimwit because they actually fell for his phony line about believing in a god. And these are the same fools who believe there was a Garden of Eden and a pair of people got kicked out because they tasted the forbidden fruit! Some god he/she/it must be.

Here is an excerpt:

"Americans over 45 are disproportionately more likely than their younger counterparts to be among the long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or more). Americans older than 45 make up about 14% of the labor force but 37% of the long-term unemployed.1 Older workers—even those as young as their late 40s and early 50s—are disproportionately more likely to fall into the ranks of the long-term unemployed."

[JDPriestly]

1. Thanks.

I've been looking for these figures. This is a national scandal. We raise our children, send them to college, get them started in life and then, just when we finally have the time to focus on work, we lose our jobs. It happened to me. I am extremely healthy, highly educated, with a recent advanced degree, capable, likable and smart, but I can't even get a job interview. In my field, I have to put the year I graduated from college on my resume, and it is a dead giveaway that I am over 60. It is so depressing because, although I live very modestly, I can't afford to retire. If I took Social Security now, it would not even cover my house payment. We older unemployed people have to start organizing now or we will be in very bad shape five years from now.

Oh, and another thing, we are an extremely cheap source of temp labor. We are just what corporate America needs, desperate, skilled and extremely docile and willing to work for peanuts. What a way to end your working life.

[Kmarx]

4. JDPriestly

I love the way you express yourself -- straight forward and to the point. There are many of us out here, many more than you might think, this includes millions of Americans who are too young to realize how bad conditions are getting for many of us in the middle class. These youth will someday join us in this nightmare but for now they are like we were some seemingly few years ago when we too had dreams and were too ready to accept that the future would be something to look forward to. Youth should have its dreams but how things have changed since we dreamed!

Not that you will feel any better, nor should you, but I too am out of the field that I was in for 25 years. I lost my last full-time job in May of 2001. (Note who was elected just 3 or so months prior!) I have managed to grab a contract here and there since then and am now trying to pursue other avenues of income but the going is difficult and all these avenues involve being an ‘independent contractor’, in other words, the ‘new’ Bush economy is one where corporations have no obligations to society, their obligations are to corporate CEO’s and major stockholders. Corporations and their puppets like that sweetheart in Congress, David Drier, just belly-ache about the need to outsource or risk extinction while raking in unheard of profits.

I was interviewed only a few times for a full-time position since 2001. Each time I was the oldest one in the building and knew I was out of the running. It’s not that I am uneducated (I have a BA, MA and MS ), it’s just plain age discrimination, a practice that is just fine with the nitwit in the White House and his henchmen whose only function in life is to make the world safe for unbridled Capitalism.

Your story is one that is the story of millions. It reminds me of the poem Maud Mueller by poet John Greenleaf Whittier whose immortal lines really capture a part of life that all of us can relate to:

Alas for maiden, alas for judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

When we were young we were deluded by believing that the American Dream was open to all. It was nothing of the sort. Today we can only look back and recall what might have been.

[kweerwolf]

2. Wow ... I've been looking for that info.

All seven people in my department were notified our positions would be eliminate at the end of June (all but one of us is over 40, btw). In all most three months of looking for other employment before our contracts run out, only two of us - the youngest two - have found new employment.

I'll share this website with my co-workers. It may not help us find jobs, but at least we'll know we aren't alone in trying to rebuild careers at mid-life.

[Kmarx]

5. You are singled out because of your age.

I worked for a company that used to be located in Middlebury, CT. It designed and manufactured modems and wrote software which allowed network administrators to monitor large networked systems. Sometime after I left I received a list via email of former colleagues that were let go on the same day. I noted to the sender of the email that these people were all over 45 or so. A bit down the road some of those that lost their jobs tried to file a class action suit. It was rumored that prior to the 'downsizing' the CEO (who was a real SOB) was overheard to have said that the upcoming layoff would involve only the 'baldies and the fatties'. I never heard what happened after that. It wasn't long before that CEO dropped dead at a meeting. I doubt that anyone cried, including his 3 ex's and his then present wife (who he fired some years before for posting a notice about a party for her then boyfriend who was going to another company, a competitor. I guess the old boy had second thoughts about the firing when she took it to the state and was told that he had to rehire her or be sued. Ironically he eventually married her. She was half his age and stood to make a mint when the old boy kicked off. I hope she did.)

[spooky3]

7. wow, what a story!

[dflprincess]

10. I was part of a layoff last September that,

when you looked at who was layed off appeared to be age based. It took me 8-1/2 months to find a new job. There was some agitation by some folks about a speaking to lawyers, but I haven't heard if anyone did anything. (I had no choice but to take the severence package which meant I had to sign away my right to sue.) Part of the problem in the layoff I was involved in is that the victims were scattered around the country so we couldn't get together.

3M and Best Buy are both being sued for age discrimination. One of the items being used against 3M lawsuit is that they used the "forced ranking" review system started by Jack Welch at GE. The company I worked for used the same system. If you're not familar with how this works, here it is in a nutshell. If you manage 6 employees, come review time, you have to find 2 above average, 2 average, and 2 below average. It doesn't matter if they're all great workers. So, subjective factors like age, current salary, and healthcare cost, not to mention personality become part of the manager's decision.

If you're over 40 and your company uses this system and you get a "needs improvement" review - get your resume together. One 53 year old woman who was laid off when I was, had worked for the company for 21 years and had always received excellent reviews, until her last one. She was also out on disability because she was fighting cancer (she's also a minority - I do hope she called a lawyer).

[Kmarx]

11. I hope she got a lawyer too!

In my posting #5 in this thread I mentioned a company I worked for in Middlebury, CT. The VP of Engineering, a big asshole if there ever was one, used this 'Jack Welch' system. We knew he got it elsewhere as we knew him as too stupid and involved in matters other than his job.

You are correct, under the Welch age-based pogrom a good worker may get canned on some small matter all they need is to get sick or grow a bit to old.

It really gets me when a winner like Welch comes up with a scheme and the sheep in corporate America swear by it as a proven. This is the same phony who tells the public he created 50,000 jobs at G.E. but neglects the fact he eliminated 100,000 jobs when he started! Also, any real job creation at GE under him and under the present management is in India and elsewhere!!! If you want to see a good article about Welch and his role in opening India for the export of millions of American jobs, visit: http://www.itpaa.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1521.

Welch is the consummate corporate Capitalist:

• First and foremost he knows profit and only profit at any cost (excuse the pun).
  
  
• He is filthy rich and got there by stabbing others in the back.
  
  
• He would have made a great politician, a real sociopath if there ever was one.
  
  
• He is the type who would send thousands of Americans to their death in some asinine war just for profit.
  
  
• He'd screw his own mother out of her last dime.
  

[undeterred]

3. That's me

48, well qualified, and 20 months of unemployment during the Bush admin. I guess things are only going to get worse. Thanks a bunch, corporate whores.

[Kmarx]

8. We live in the 'Bush-era' of 'prosperity.

No one should be surprised that you have been out so long. This is the worst so-called recovery in the country's history. If we use past recoveries as a benchmark, this economy should have replaced the 3.5 million jobs lost during the Bush recession and created 9.5 million new jobs! (A president can only boast of 'creating' new jobs once all the jobs lost during recession are 'replaced'. Don't let corporate sociopaths like Cheney and a moron like Bush fool you into believing that the 3.5 million jobs are new jobs, that is, jobs the economy created -- no these jobs are replacements! Until ALL the lost jobs are replaced, a president's job creation tally is ZERO!)

Something often over looked by the media and the crooks in Washington is that our population is growing by leaps and bounds. In a year it can grow over 2.5 million. The recession officially ended in November of 2001. This means that our population grew by almost 9 million since that time. Many of these people must work. Many of the 'new' jobs are filled by cheap foreign labor right here in our country. There were jobs actually created -- overseas!!!! Our economy has never had such a poor recovery and this country such a big asshole.

Here is a link to, " The rising stakes of job loss: Stubborn long-term joblessness amid falling unemployment rates": http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp162

Here is another link that mentions a first for the US economy -- it's capable of creating only jobs that cannot be outsourced!: http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050603_labor.htm

[spooky3]

6. I agree with the thrust of this but one set of numbers looks wrong.

Americans older than 45 surely are much more than 14% of the labor force. Other figures I have seen are that there are more than 55 million people older than 45 in the labor force. There are fewer than 300 million people in the country. You have to subtract probably 50 million children; non-working college students; disabled persons unable to work; many people 65 and older who have retired; and those choosing not to be in the labor force (e.g., a small % parents with small children or eldercare responsibilities). My guess is that there are only about 150 million people in the labor force at any given time. So people over 45 would likely be 33% or more of those in the labor force. Maybe someone has links to exact numbers.

[bobbieinok]

9. I wished I were younger until I saw the effect of W on the economy.....and

everything else........now, except for health issues, I'm almost glad I'm retired.....