There are a number of reasons people continue to work in their later years. A-A-R-P in New York and the state’s U-S Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are working to ease discrimination most of those older workers experience.
She’s introduced a bill in Washington to give workers who have faced discrimination because of their age some protections.
AARP found 64% of older workers witnessed or suffered some sort of discrimination themselves, higher for women and people of color.
Senior Associate State Director of Advocacy Joe Stelling explained that can be anything from not getting a job or promotion to limiting advancement or having opinions and suggestions dismissed.
Gillibrand’s proposal would outlaw forced arbitration in employment contracts. Job agreements can include waving the right to sue in cases of discrimination. If passed, the bill would make that illegal.
New York already prohibits forced arbitration, but other practices that harm older workers are pervasive. “Screening in applications, for example, and people looking for markers of age, either putting your age on a resume or, graduation dates, duration of time worked and things like that, can be used as proxies,” Stilling said, to eliminate older workers from job searches.
AARP is pushing a bill in Albany that “would do exactly that,” Stelling added, “banning the requirement of basic markers of age on initial employment applications, unless it's important for the job itself.”
Stelling noted older employees might continue working for economic reasons, as costs for housing and health care rise, or because they feel they haven't saved enough for retirement earlier. He called it an irony that businesses would discriminate against older workers.
“There are jobs that (companies) are struggling to fill, that there's experience and training that may be lacking in younger workers, and older workers bring that to the table,” he added.
“So to take this applicant pool out from the get-go or to discriminate against these workers and not have them is really a detriment to the company (and) a detriment to society.”
AARP reports the U.S. economy loses an estimated $850 billion due to age discrimination each year.
