According to Sammer (2011), adults aged 45 and older made up around 40% of the workforce in the United States. He confirms that the present recession, rising insurance costs, and advancing social security age all contribute to the majority of older Americans working longer than expected (Sammer, 2011). Clearly, the combination of such known and unknown factors resulted in an increase in the number of workers aged 55 to 64 from around 54.2% in 1985 to 63.8% in 2007. Get a comprehensive understanding of why older people prefer to stay in workforce may benefit the corporate that are willing to learn from this data and utilize it to their advantage. Sammer (2011) indicate that older people are more dependable and responsible than their younger counterparts and thus companies can utilize this demographic group to fill the positions throughout their organizations (Sammer, 2011).
However, firms need to also be mindful of the current laws that protect the rights of older people in workplace. One of these laws is Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 that inclusively and explicitly forbids discrimination of the individuals aged 40 years and above (Rosenberg-McKay, 2014). The ADEA protects older workers through the hiring and recruitment processes. Violation of ADEA will lead firms being accused of disparate treatment and disparate impact. Indeed, before the establishment of ADEA, workers belonging to particular groups were protected by Title VII and Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Rosenberg-McKay, 2015). Nevertheless, this act did not protect the individuals who were discriminated on the basis of age.
Undoubtedly, several factors lead to discrimination of older people and once firms realize that such concerns have no merit, they will be able to move forward using older employees in profitable and lawful manner.
References
Rosenberg-McKay, D. (2014). Preventing age discrimination at work: The age discrimination in
employment act. Retreived from http://careplanning.about.com.
Rosenberg-McKay, D. (2015). Title VII of the civil rights act of 1964: Preventing Employment
Discrimination. Retrieved from http://careerplanning.about.com.
Sammer, J. (2011). Will an older work force increase cost? Business Finance. June 16, 2011.
Retrieved from http://businessfinancemag.com.
