The Last Prejudice - Perspectives On Living

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.

This was a from a job listing on August 1, 2021 for a health services organization. It is one of the largest health-care providers in its state. At first glance, it looks like absolutely everyone is covered as far as consideration. But one group is absent: age. Ageism is rapidly growing into an acceptable prejudice, although it has been a problem for a long time.

Ageism has a few meanings. It can refer to a stereotype or negative attitude toward an older person. It also refers to a form of job discrimination. According to the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, it protects certain applicants and employees 40 years of age and older from discrimination on the basis of age in hiring, promotion, discharge, compensation, or terms, conditions or privileges of employment. By law, it is illegal to discriminate by age. The problem with enforcing anti-ageism laws is that age discrimination is very hard to prove in court. In 2009, the Supreme Court determined that ageism must be proved as the sole reason for discrimination. According to two researchers from NYU and Harvard, age discrimination laws are not often enforced, and the courts have all but ”gutted” them.

There is some disagreement on why ageism exists and how much of it is due to culture. Eastern culture is less apt to discriminate than Western, mainly because of its long history of honoring and respecting older generations. Older people in Western culture are seen as weak and out of touch and serve as a reminder of the inevitable fate of growing old. There may also be an animosity toward older people because of their successes and perceived path of destruction to selfishly achieve. These are all harmful stereotypes that match any other stereotype of race, gender, political views, religion or physical disability.

There is a prevalent, more insidious and harmful type of ageism that has been growing unchecked in our society, and that is companies using youth to sell their brands. This has been going on for eons, but not in the same ways it’s happening now. I know of someone who worked for a company that was creating a marketing video for its potential customers. The video was to show all the different departments and actual employees. There was one department that had one employee, someone who won the company numerous awards but was in his 40s. It was decided by management to use a young model to represent that department instead of the actual employee. Apparently, age trumped the successes this individual brought the company. The idea with these types of marketing decisions is to show youth means energy and relevancy. Smaller businesses sometimes show headshots of all their employees. This is part of that marketing also. So-called ugly employees find themselves in the same fate as older workers. A business likes to show that its employees match the demographics of their customers—that’s the excuse anyway. Most people that work online never see the person they are dealing with, so that is a bit of a lame excuse. Unfortunately, in most states it is legal to hire or fire based on attractiveness, and given that we are a youth-driven culture, the older and unattractive are left by the wayside, as if they can’t be brilliant or contribute anything worthwhile to society.

A friend who had worked as a model for a large home-shopping network told me that her work was cut because the channel was revamping its image and wanted all young people, whether it was in front of or behind the camera. She was in her late 30s at the time. In another department at the same company, older workers were fired because the company wanted to get rid of “dead wood.” This is a story I have heard over and over. Employers seem to be quite forthcoming about discriminating against age. I’ve heard of one story where the president of the company told all 400 employees at a company meeting that he was going to make it his mission to focus on hiring only young people. This president systematically fired many older workers. This can be done legally by the excuse of ‘position elimination,’ but as long as the employer doesn’t say “you are being fired solely for your age,” he or she can legally pick off every older worker.

Age discrimination can even occur where you would think there would be more caution. In Pittsburgh , March 2021, an attorney sued the School of Law at the University of Pittsburgh for ageism. Lawyers themselves face it as well.

In the United States, there are age discrimination laws to prevent prejudice in hiring (The Age Discrimination in Employment Act ) but it does not protect workers under 40 years of age. What makes it even more interesting is that that the United States Government is the biggest employer but actually discriminates more than any other business. There are 2.1 million civil workers and 2.86 million employees that are in the armed forces and defense positions, but all of those jobs are restricted to applicants under 34-43 years of age. That is about 5 million jobs that are not available for people over 40. That is more than all the Amazon, Walmart, Target Home Depot and Starbucks employees added together or more than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Delaware combined!

Unfortunately, careers may not last as long as we like for various reasons, and it becomes necessary to retrain. It is becoming much harder for older workers to retrain because of their exclusion in many retraining programs. According to The Insider, only one federal program exists to retrain older workers and it’s for seniors under the poverty line. The federal government is also steadily increasing the age for full Social Security benefits. It doesn’t seem like the federal government has given much thought to this dilemma. In Pennsylvania, the state government has an apprenticeship program with a standards policy that excludes age from their discrimination policy for the sponsors. Ageism can happen on a government level also.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY STANDARDS § 81.11. Obligation of sponsors. Each sponsor of an apprenticeship program shall be responsible for the following:(1) The recruitment, selection, employment, and training of apprentices during their apprenticeship, without discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or nonjob-related disability.

Guess what: Regardless of your gender, race, religion, income, orientation, color or political affiliation, you WILL get older and this will affect you. According to AARP, 78% of older workers have experienced discrimination in the workplace. Various sources including AARP indicate that age discrimination starts to impact us around 40. If you decide to have children at 25, by the time you are in your early 40s, your children may be trying to decide what college to go to. If you find it hard to get a living wage at this time because of your age, remember you also may be trying to pay off your student loan. StudentAid.gov reveals that about 14 million student loan borrowers between 35 and 49 have not paid off their loan. Workers over 40 may experience a harder time finding work before they even pay off their loans.

It’s kind of ironic that the type of discrimination we will all most certainly face at some point is also one that flies way beneath the radar. There are three ways to get around ageism. One, make all your money for the rest of your life before 40. Two, find a fountain of youth and make fake IDs. Three, stop discriminating against the older generation and contact your local representatives when you see age discrimination. Hire based on potential results as opposed to age. Recognize age discrimination will happen to you, and when it does, you most likely won’t be prepared for it. 40 years is potentially half your life—the first half. What are you going to do for the rest of it? A few years ago, I read that human resources departments intentionally screened out applicants who were 45 and over. The pandemic has actually pushed that age even lower by giving another delusory excuse to fire older workers.

As a more woke culture, we need to eliminate discrimination when we recognize it. Some of you know what discrimination feels like; for those that don’t, you will . . . unless we consider ageism just as serious as all other prejudices.

I reached out to the health-care provider about their discrimination policy and why age was omitted from their policy. They haven’t returned my messages. I also have reached out to various State Senators and as of this writing, none have returned my messages.

Sources:

https://newjersey.usnlx.com/viewjob.asp?jobid=36275443

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination/agedisc

https://www.aarp.org/research/topics/economics/info-2021/older-workers-new-skills-covid-19-pandemic.html

https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/portfolio

https://www.nextavenue.org/ageism-in-the-workplace-can-president-biden-change-the-course/

https://www.businessinsider.com/retraining-doesnt-help-older-workers-find-jobs-because-of-ageism-2019-5

https://www.dli.pa.gov/laws-regs/regulations/Pages/Apprenticeship-and-Traning-Programs.aspx#81.11

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/advance-article/doi/10.1093/geronb/gbaa181/5938666

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/opinion/letters/appearance-bias.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347948/

http://navbat.com/can-you-fire-someone-for-being-too-ugly/