Editor's note: This is the seventh story in a series about aging in Athens and the concerns of soon-to-retire baby boomers.
They grew up amid a battle for equality, and as Woodstock memories fade with the monotony of the working world, some baby boomers are finding a new issue to protest: age discrimination.
The oldest members of that generation turn 60 this year, while the youngest are in their early 40s, but all are now covered by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits discrimination against workers who are 40 and older.
Although tracking why a type of discrimination increases or decreases is difficult, influxes in the number of age discrimination reports seem to occur in accordance with economic recessions, said James Ryan, a spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The EEOC has received an average of about 16,770 charges annually for the past decade, but the annual totals vary widely in those years from a low of 14,141 in 1999 to a high of 19,921 in 2002. The majority of those complaints were found to have no reasonable cause.
For 2005, the EEOC received 16,585 charges, 674 of which were from Ohio; of those, only 46 law suits were filed under the ADEA.
Employees who feel victimized by age discrimination also can file with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, which reported that 840 of the 5,342 allegations it received in 2005 cited age as a cause, said Toni Delgado, a spokeswoman for the OCRC.
The estimated 77 million or so baby boomers nearing retirement will face added challenges as they continue to age but remain in the workforce or even opt to switch jobs, said Kathy Keller, a spokeswoman for the Ohio AARP.
We know that it's harder (for older people) to get a job because people have these preconceived notions that aren't even true
she said, adding that many employees carry a desire for success and improvement well into their later years.
But one problem is salient for employees pursuing age discrimination charges: As everybody knows it's very hard to prove because everybody knows it's illegal
so they kind of tiptoe around it
Keller said.
Ryan is less confident that employers are aware of the laws against age discrimination, which can include everything from overt favoritism of younger workers to mass layoffs mostly affecting the oldest employees in a company. What employers need to understand is that any sort of decision based on age is unlawful
Ryan said. Too many employers apparently think that it's OK to make decisions based on stereotypes associated with age.
The issue of age discrimination hit Ohio University more than three years ago when Robert Lipset, a former assistant professor, filed charges after being denied tenure. The university is appealing the most recent decision in the case, in which OU was ordered to pay Lipset more than $265,000.
OU also is awaiting a decision about age discrimination allegations filed by an unnamed man who was turned down for a position in the Facilities Management Department, said Nicolette Dioguardi, associate director of the OU Office of Legal Affairs.
Ryan advises anyone feeling victimized by age discrimination to keep detailed, dated records of anything said or done by employers that might indicate an offense. The more information that you save
the more of it you have
the better case you can build
he said.
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