Age Discrimination In Employment Act (ADEA)

Employment and Age Discrimination

Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) is a federal law that created in 1967 and signed by President Lyndon Johnson to protect older workers. The act states that people's needs to be employed based on the ability rather than age. ADEA prevents discrimination by prohibiting an employer from denying employment to people age 40 or older. The law protects employees and prohibits illegal hiring, job assignment, benefits, firing, or any other conditions of employment. Any state or government agencies addition to private business with over 20 employees must compline with the law. The ADEA is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that prohibit discrimination against not only employees

Sometimes older workers feel discouraged and hopeless trying to find new jobs. For example, I heard many times, who would hire me to perform this work, when there are many young and well-educated people? It’s sad to see that some job advertising specify age by using words like “looking for college graduates” or “young and motivated workers needed.” I would love to email to these companies and educate them by providing a statistic. Older workers are great employees with excellent work habits and high level of responsibility. With my experience, I need to remind to the younger employees several times about a specific task, and I only need to say once to the "veterans," and the job will be done without any additional complications. Studying and obtaining information about future of the workforce, I realized the potential future challenges that many businesses will experience because of the retirement of the baby boomers. It’s nice to know our country created laws to protect older workers, while many industries will desperately need the older generation to support the production. I understand that hiring process is not an easy task; an organization wants to hire skilled, experienced employee but doesn’t want to offer much compensation. In this case, more likely, the company will employ less experience, younger worker because the company will offer less money. To me, the whole process and the final decision is an age discrimination process, and not always corporations provide good reasons, besides the money, for the arrangements. Older employees are still active workers, and the law protects these employees. Even though age discrimination might happen unintentionally, many older employees are still experiencing challenges to find new jobs. The law is there to protect the older workers, but not always there is a proof or enough evidence to make employer reliable or get compensation for age