Results tagged “age discrimination” from EdLabor Journal

If the answer is "twenty-eight percent," what's the question?

Q1: What percentage of Americans will be insured under the new health insurance reform law?
Q2: How much can a one-percentage point difference in 401(k) fees reduce overall retirement income over a lifetime of saving?
Q3: What's the percent of Committee Members up for re-election in 2010?
Q4: How much has age discrimination increased?

Continue reading for the answer.

Ensuring Fair Treatment in the Workplace

On June 18, 2009, in ‘Gross v. FBL Financial,’ the Supreme Court rewrote our civil rights laws and made it harder for workers facing age discrimination to enforce their rights. Jack Gross worked for an insurance company for 12 years, rising to a management position. In 2003, Gross was demoted with lower pay and claimed that the demotion was because of age discrimination. A jury agreed that the company unlawfully demoted him because of his age. However, the verdict was overturned by an appeals court and in a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas. The decision not only overturned Gross’ jury trial, but also made it much more difficult for workers to hold employers accountable for their illegal actions.  

• The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act will ensure that all Americans regardless of age will be able to seek justice when they are wronged on the job.  The bill will overturn the Supreme Court’s decision and ensure that workers with a legitimate claim will have their day in court. It would make the standard for proving age discrimination the same as those alleging race, national origin or religious discrimination.

• The conservative Supreme Court once again tipped the balance of justice in favor of the corporations and the powerful and against ordinary Americans. The court changed longstanding law that will make older workers have a much higher burden of proof than those alleging race, national origin or religious discrimination.

• It will be much more difficult to hold employers accountable for their illegal activity. Victims of age discrimination will now have to read their boss’ mind and prove that their boss would not have made the same decision absent consideration of age.   

• Prior law was fair and worked. Workplace discrimination laws exist to ensure that all people, of all ages and backgrounds, who work hard and play by the rules have the means to seek justice when they are treated unfairly on the job.

• These protections are especially important for our older workers, who are facing an uphill battle holding onto jobs in this economy. According to the EEOC, discrimination based on age has increased by 30 percent in 2008 alone.

• Once a job is lost, it’s often much more difficult for older workers to land a new job that may require different skills sets, pay cuts, or new educational degrees. Only 61 percent of workers age 55-64 who lost their jobs in 2005-07 had been re-employed as of January 2008, compared to 75 percent of those 25 to 54.

Jack Gross never meant to be the face of civil rights legislation, but that was before he was demoted simply because of his age.

[Mr. Gross] left [Farm Bureau] for a while before coming back and working his way up to claims administration vice president. He was getting regular raises and great job reviews. He was highly valued.

Then one day in 2003, Gross said he and just about every other 50-or-older supervisor or higher-level worker in the claims department - and nobody younger than 50 - was demoted. It was a kick in the gut.

"For years, I couldn't have been more loyal," he said. "I was always proud to say I worked for the Farm Bureau."

He had no idea he'd become the invisible man. "I went from having a great job to, literally, not doing much of anything."

This year, he's been doing mostly clerical work, "taking numbers from one report and posting them onto another."

Mr. Gross sued his employer for age discrimination and won $47,000 in damages. The award was appealed and the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Mr. Gross had to show that age had to be the deciding factor, rather than a motivating factor. That is much is harder to prove.

In today's New York Times editorial, Preventing Age Discrimination, the editorial board highlights the efforts by Senator Harkin and Rep. Miller to overturn this ruling by the Supreme Court and to clarify that all workers regardless of age, race, sex, national origin or religion shall not be discriminated against.

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative George Miller of California, the Democratic chairmen of two powerful committees, recently introduced bills to reverse the court’s age ruling. They would make the standard for proving age discrimination equivalent to the standard for proving discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin.

When older workers lose their jobs, according to the advocacy group AARP, it takes them longer than other workers to get new ones. Age-discrimination complaints have been rising. In 2008, the number of age cases filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was up 29 percent from the year earlier.

Congress made clear four decades ago that it wants to protect older workers from discrimination, but the Supreme Court has tried to interfere with that effort. It is up to Congress to put the teeth back into the law.

Watch Mr. Gross and Chairman Miller at the press conference accompanying the introduction of the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act.

Learn more about the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act.

Today, three Chairmen – U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced landmark legislation that restores vital civil rights protections for older workers in the face of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gross v. FBL Financial.

In Gross, the Supreme Court rewrote civil rights laws, overturning well-established precedent and making it harder for workers facing age discrimination to enforce their rights.  The Court ruled that it is no longer enough for a victim of discrimination to prove that age was a motivating factor in an adverse employment decision.  An employee must now prove that it was the decisive factor.  The Court’s holding specifically means that victims of age discrimination face a higher burden than those alleging race, sex, national origin or religious discrimination.  And, the opinion has already had reverberations in a wide range of civil rights cases beyond age discrimination.
 
“The same conservative Supreme Court justices responsible for the backward ruling against Lilly Ledbetter have now thrown another legal barrier in front of hard-working older Americans,” said Rep. Miller.  “Workplace discrimination based on age is just as wrong as discrimination based on any other irrelevant factor -- and it should be treated as such in the court of law. The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act will ensure that all workers are treated fairly and not subject to decisions based on an employer’s prejudice, especially in this difficult economy.”

Read more about H.R. 3721 - Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act