Quote:
Originally Posted by Pats2010
Age discrimination is alive and well. It may be illegal, but it is practiced every day at almost every company.
If one job comes down to two candidates who are ages 40 and 60 respectively, who do you think will get that job?
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You better believe it is practiced every day. I have experienced this with the company that I worked for and was one of the casualties and there is nothing that can be done about it.
Here are some of the tactics that are used.
1. They decrease the number of job classifications and job descriptions to increase the labor pool to pick from. You may have the top rating at one time but in the new pool you are close to the bottom. This really works well if you are the only person in that job classification.
2. They change the job rating system on a regular basis and place emphasis on other areas and not just performance.
3. Declare problems with the pension fund and give you 3 or 4 days to make up your retirement decisions if you are eligible. In this companies case the amount of lump sum pension would be cut to 80%. You had to meet the requirements to retire and many did as not to take such a hit on their pension. The same thing happened a year later and this time the lump sum payout was 50% and if you did not take then you were required to take an annuity at a rate to be determined at a date when you chose retirement. This pension fund is now so under funded if you wait you will only get pennies on the dollar.
4. Totally do away with your job classification but the work gets assigned to someone else.
I can go on and on but that is life. One other thing that when you are let go you have to sign a legal document that you will not work for the company for at least one year. Also you have to sign or you will not get any severance that you have coming to you. Severance was at one time one weeks pay for every years service and that has been cut to a max of 12 weeks regardless of the years of service.
And today just happens to be the one year anniversary of this happening to me and it happened to a lot more at that company over the last year.