Giving Forced Retirement the Ax
SCHACTER, HINDY LAUER
THE REAL ISSUES Giving Forced Retirement tile Ax BY HINDY LAUER SCHACTER Three recent legislative victories symbolize the growing political power of the 22 million Americans over 65. In...
...it may well mean, in today's wintry fiscal climate, a city going without a caseworker, teacher or librarian...
...The final package is expected to come out of the House-Senate conference shortly (perhaps before this article reaches you), but whatever its shape, there seems to be a popular consensus for eliminating (or at least diminishing the scope of) mandatory retirement...
...When a worker reaches 65 today, he may lose his fire and verve solely because he knows that he must leave the job no matter what he can accomplish, that not even the greatest enthusiasm can alter this reality...
...Where pension arrangements are inadequate, or nonexistent, mandatory retirement leaves pensioners to fend for themselves with inadequate resources...
...The equities come down on the side of opening up the job market...
...The matter of competence, too, applies equally to mandatory retirement and the employment and promotion of every conceivable minority group...
...Leaving aside the fact that many older workers are themselves women or minorities (some of whom have just recently moved out of clerk or manual labor slots), and the eventual destiny of the young of today as the elderly of tomorrow, all of these groups actually share the same goals...
...Without mandatory retirement, the vast majority of workers lacking adequate pensions will stay at their jobs (again whether they really want to or not), keeping others out because of economic necessity...
...In the same way, if a public agency or private company wishes to use an age cut-off system of retirement, it should have to demonstrate that age really does determine ability to do the job...
...In some cases (sanitation men, construction workers, etc...
...the problem is to find valid and reliable ways of objectively assessing and monitoring competence...
...House of Representatives voted 359-4 to bar mandatory retirement for Federal employes and for most other public and private workers before the age of 70...
...Yet the trend has stirred some fears, particularly among other "protected" groups...
...The squeeze is being felt in the private sector, too...
...or a woman of 40 in his slot...
...These two options, however, would only be meaningful to older people if there were changes in the Social Security statute, especially the provision whereby someone receiving benefits loses them in any year that earnings go over $3,000...
...In the ensuing embarrassed confusion, nobody thinks of asking whether the pie might be sliced in a different way-or even, mirabile dictu, whether we can bake a bigger one...
...And last month, the Senate ratified, 87-6, a modified version of the House bill...
...Groups that traditionally were discriminated against begin to achieve something resembling adequate participatory rights in the nation's political and economic system, then set to squabbling over who should have which slice of the pie...
...They each have an interest, for example, in the upgrading of pension systems...
...at General Motors it is 59...
...But this provision reads almost like a suggestion that many older people will not be able to perform their tasks...
...said that he signed California's law because he believed "in extending the opportunities for everyone and not contracting them for anyone...
...In short, it is a mistake to speak of the interests of the elderly as being necessarily opposed to the interests of women and minorities...
...Yet economic questions are inseparably linked to the effects of mandatory retirement...
...Executives say they would be delighted to work with the Einstein, the Stokow-ski, the exception still active and vigorous into his 80s or 90s, but that, ahem, the average older person loses wit, push, verve, physical coordination, etc...
...The development of fair assessment systems in all phases of employment-hiring, promotion and retirement-is critical to bringing about an equitable distribution of jobs...
...In many ways, the mandatory retirement controversy is a replay of what has happened so frequently in recent years...
...Studies show that when companies offer satisfactory pension plans, employes often retire before 65...
...this may well be...
...Women and the elderly would also benefit from a more flexible attitude toward job-sharing: A mother with preschool or elementary age children might then be able to enter the work force by splitting a full-time position with someone who is partially retired...
...Some have contended that age, unlike race and sex, does influence performance...
...In California, predictions made during legislative discussion were that no more than 5 per cent of public workers would stay on past the point where they could collect retirement benefits...
...most of the time, though, proof that age makes for incompetence is scarce...
...But this is only part of several larger, interrelated battles-to end the allocation of jobs according to stereotypes of all kinds, to increase employment and improve pensions, and to develop methods that allow jobs to be assigned and workers evaluated on the basis of competence alone...
...This sort of argument should alert us that the question of mandatory retirement is a civil-rights issue...
...One step in this direction would be stimulating creation of more part-time jobs-and not merely at the clerk/typist level...
...A white, male worker out at 65, therefore, does not mean a black Hindy Lauer Schacter, a past contributor, is a lecturer in public administration at Medgar Evers College...
...it would not apply to tenured college teachers or those whose retirement income would be over $20,000 a year, and would permit forced retirement for Federal workers at 70...
...Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr...
...Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines state that if a test for a position seems to discriminate against a protected group, it is up to the employer to show that the test is an accurate predictor of performance...
...The recently passed California statute permits state employes (except policemen and firefighters) to stay on the job beyond the current retirement age if the state certifies them as competent...
...Richard Silberman, California's secretary of business and transportation, is critical too: "It is necessary that at some point senior employes step aside...
...Regardless of whether they want to work, some will be forced by the system to seek welfare-with its burden on the taxpayers and social stigma on the recipient...
...All employes should be capable of working efficiently...
...In both the public and private sectors, blacks, Hispanics and women have begun to move up into jobs that were closed to them for many years...
...Since there are a limited number of positions at the top, if older executives continue working until 70 (or later), a slowdown in promotions will occur...
...Another key factor in this area is pensions-particularly how successfully they induce workers to leave their jobs voluntarily...
...In the case of government jobs, agency budgets are being tightened at the state and local levels, and not all retirees are being replaced...
...But opportunities can only expand in an expanding job market...
...This, in turn, warns Vernon Jordan Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, would clearly hamper the government's affirmative action programs...
...In other words, problems of competence do not exclusively or indeed primarily concern old people, and special systems for monitoring the performance of workers past 65 are unfair...
...At Metropolitan Life Insurance, for example, the average retirement age is 62...
...Yet how do they know...
...Thus instead of pitting themselves against each other, older Americans and other minorities should be working together to bring about mutually beneficial changes in the structure of employment...
...everyone" cannot have a chance to work when there is no meaningful business growth...
...In September, the state of California passed a law banning forced retirement in public and private jobs...
...Governor Brown noted that the California bill would limit the tendency to stereotype the elderly and relegate them to the "backwaters of society...
...So far, such methods have not been found, and until they are, inefficient workers, young and old alike, will continue to hold jobs they are unqualified for or cannot carry out...
...Shortly thereafter, the U.S...
...The script is depressingly similar to the "Of course, I'd hire a Ralph Bunche or Lena Home, or a woman who can think like a man," that used to be standard fare in so many personnel offices...
Vol. 60 • November 1977 • No. 22
