Thursday, December 8, 2005
Growing old is inevitable, and usually better than the alternative. But in a culture obsessed with youth, aging just isn't hip. Today, in the next segment of our series , "The Aging Boom" we examine why despite legal protections instituted more than 40 years ago, prejudice against older Americans persists.
 (Click for larger view.) Jeff and Randy Swoggert of the Turnaround Group stand behind their employee Jack White and all their older employees.
|
Realplayer / Windows Media / MP3`You can't call a member of a religious or ethnic group...a name...
But you can casually refer to your elderly neighbor as "the geezer next door"... and few are going to bat an eye. That perplexes Dr.Robert Butler, founder of the National Institute on aging. He coined the term "ageism" in 1968, when the Washington DC housing authority was trying to put an old folks home in his neighborhood:
I was horrified at the reaction at the reaction of the neighbors that they didn't want quote want all these old people around. It struck me as analogous to racism and sexism. And I mentioned that to a friend of mine who's on the editorial board of the Washington Post. So he later sent a young reporter who later became famous by the name of Carl Bernstein down to interview me. And during the course of the interview I said ageism, prejudice towards age.
The Older Americans Act of 1965 created certain legal protections. But it didn't radically change our youth-obsessed culture or bring the generations together. Ageism still exists and it's still rare to see a relationship like the one Orlando has with Gene:
I got a lot of homework done last night.
Last night? Wonderful. What kind of homework did you do?
Writing and some more math.
Orlando is 10. His reading mentor, Gene, is pushing 80. They learn from each other at The Intergenerational School, a charter school at the Fairhill Center for Aging in Cleveland. Dr. Kathryn Whitehouse is its co-founder and chief educator:
We want to teach children that everyone across the lifespan should be valued as a learner and the best way to promote lifelong learning and an attitude toward that is to have potent role models that the children interact with.
Orlando values these role models:
First they been on the planet more than us...and they probably have been in school longer than us and they know more than us and they can help us with everything we do.
The Intergenerational School has been open for only five years. But the intergenerational approach is nothing new to the Gray Panthers. Executive Director Susan Mareni says Maggie Kuhn formed the activist group in 1970 after being forced out of her job when she turned 65:
Although it started around age discrimination, Maggie was a visionary leader and she would say we really can't be separating the generations... we need to work together, we need to learn to understand each.
Early on the Gray Panthers joined forces with college students in opposing the Vietnam War. They remain active today on many fronts, including fighting stereotypes in the media:
Amoco just ran an ad that depicted old people being shot down by this water spray like a pistong and young people being replaced all happy, you know like they work now because they're new. We were so offended by that. So we've written a letter and are asking for a retraction of those ads.
How do such ads get on TV? Why ageism isn't viewed as politically incorrect as are racism or sexism? Robert Butler says it's because ageism has a universal basis:
Fear that you're going to become helpless, that you're going to become old and die. It's a bunch of D's... deterioration, depression and death...
Our sheer distaste for aging, plus the fact that we all go through it, may explain why Age bias isn't taken more seriously. Jerry Seinfeld had them rolling in the aisles recently on the Jay Leno show about how nobody wanted to come to his wedding because they hated watching old people eat.
But there's nothing funny about losing market share. Advertisers are already rethinking how to reach the 76 million baby boomers, half of whom are turning sixty next year. Their spending power, an estimated trillion dollars a year, cannot be ignored. So Cover Girl is using 51 year-old supermodel Christie Brinkley to sell its first makeup line for older women. And 62 year-old Mick Jagger appears in a TV spot for Ameriquest.
The monster demographic of the Baby Boomer's has driven marketing trends to the point that even youth-crazed Hollywood may be getting the picture that ageism is old hat. Last Year's film In Good Company with Dennis Quaid examined age discrimination in employment.
That's a topic that 59-year-old Paul Jones knows all too well. He can't forget his last day on the job at Goodyear:
They walked us down said here's a box. You've got an hour. Put your stuff in it. And I'm going to walk you out. And that's what they did. That was a painful day.
Jones is part of a class action age discrimination suit against Goodyear. He says he saw it coming but didn't want to believe it:
They had made innuendoes and you heard rumors that they were trying to get rid of the older people and cut the dead wood out. You heard that and that's probably exactly what they did. Because, even as they were laying us off, they hired other younger people, so it's to me, a clear cut case.
Jones says he was loyal to Goodyear. He started at the company right out of college and expected to stay there until he was ready to retire. Now he worries about feeding his family:
Your 59 and it's difficult to find another job.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 protects workers 40 and older. The workers fired by Goodyear claim they were victims of a performance review system that had the effect of clustering older workers at the bottom of the rankings:
Goodyear spokesman Keith Price:
I can't discuss the particulars of this case. You know what I can tell you is that we have strict policies against discrimination. We look forward to vigorously defending our case in this matter and we expect to win and believe that our policies in regards to this rating system were not discriminatory in any way.
Vivian: Why then isn't the rating system still being used.
Rating systems have been... uh, employee evaluation systems have been used for many years that many companies, including Goodyear, and they are updated, changed periodically.
A recent Supreme Court decision makes it easier to prove age discrimination so many companies are revising their HR policies, anticipating more suits, now that more than half of the American workforce is over 40.
Over the last five years the number of age discrimination cases filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission has increased by five percent. 57 year old Deborah Lynch of Aurora won a half-million dollar age discrimination suit last spring against the American Kennel Club, And Girard's police chief won his suit after the mayor tried to make him retire at age 73.
But with it all, Akron worker's rights attorney Dennis Thompson says widespread prejudice against older workers isn't going away:
Not a chance. Until you can make a 25 year old manager experience what's like to be a 50 year old employee, it's not going to happen. A lot of the younger managers want to be around younger people. They want to be around people of their own age group. That is just the way it is.
Or at least the way it has been. Many companies are now looking ahead to when 64 million baby boomers retire over the next decade. Some analysts predict a labor shortage of 10 million workers. To stave it off, companies like Borders are offering flexible job arrangements to older part-timers, and Radio Shack has launched a seniors employment website.
AARP has a program, too, to link older workers with "elder-friendly companies".
That's how Jack White of Cleveland got his job.
I just vacuum the rugs, I don't mind it. It's a good job.
At 59, White has a boss less than half his age, who treats him right:
We've been lucky enough through AARP to find people like Jack and some other employees that just take pride in their work and that's something that's hard to find today.
23 year old Randy Swoggert , President of the Youngstown-based TurnaroundGroup, says one third of his building maintenance workforce is over 50:
I would highly encourage more companies to hire the elderly because it would be better for their company.
I'm Vivian Goodman, WKSU News
Web Resources
Visit our "Aging Boom" homepage for more about this series
An "elder-friendly" company The Gray Panthers Fairhill Center for Aging American Association of Retired People
Sponsorship for the aging series provided by:
 |
 |
 |
