Age Discrimination Essay 9

Stereotypes about older people are a bound in our culture, but employers are not allowed to indulge in them when making workplace decisions. Manifestations of age discrimination can be subtle or blatant. Typical actions might include refusing to hire or promote older workers, curtailing their employee benefits, limiting their training opportunities or limiting their job responsibilities and duties. Older workers may be targeted in reductions of the work force; they may be encouraged to retire. Exit incentive programs may deny valuable additional benefits to an older worker and early retirement incentives may pressure older workers to retire prematurely. Incentive benefits may be reduced for people who continue working beyond “normal” retirement age. All of these actions reinforce a stereotype of older workers as the most dispensable in the workforce.
Various words and phrases may be used to disguise an age bias. Some examples of this are; saying that a worker costs too much, has been with the company too long, lacks versatility, is unable to adapt to new methods or technologies, lacks energy or has failed to be a forward enough thinker. In addition, decisions that are not directly based on age may have a disparate effect on older workers such as policies related to length of service or years of seniority.
Some of the thoughts behind age biased actions are that older workers should move aside to make room for younger workers who need to support families, that they are less competent, and that there’s no point in training them for new jobs. There is also an idea that younger managers do not really want to work with older workers no matter how good their skills.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) was passed by Congress to make it unlawful for an employer to base employment decisions on a worker’s age as described in the passages above. It was designed to combat ageism based on unfounded stereotypes about the diminished abilities of older