I am not a labor lawyer, but have worked in human resources and as a Chief Operating Officer of a company so have some experience in hiring and firing. A simple answer is because the law prohibits age discrimination, but allows differentiation based on skills, training, education, or intelligence. A longer answer is that anybody can get a college degree with enough intelligence and work. Many people have gotten college degress even starting out with no money. On the other hand nothing I can do will make me 30 again.ThomasP wrote:I am speaking from sheer ignorance. If an employer can require that applicant X have a Bachelor's Degree why then can't that same employer require applicant X be 18-32 or ??-?? years of age? If I am running a business I want to be able to choose my employees. If I want everyone at my gas station to have Ph.D's then so be it. If I want them to all be 22 then so be it. The rockettes are required to be a certain height correct? Doesn't that violate the Disabilities act? Little people and dwarfs or giants and big people are discriminated against with that right?
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I would wager that the Rockettes can demonstrate a "bona fide occupational qualification," which allows them an exception. Yes, if you want everyone at your gas station to have a Ph.D. you could require that, but you might have trouble finding employees (unless they had Ph.Ds in music). Again age is different. Whether it should be is another question.
I have personally witnessed older employees being laid off and then younger people being hired as replacements because they would work for less money. I don't think this is ethical and I think that in many cases it is short sighted, but I'm not sure that it is our government's responsibility to protect us from such practices. Of course what I, or you, think doesn't matter in this case. Congress passed a law and the president signed it making age discrimination illegal.
As someone who is almost 50 I appreciate having recourse if I were to lose my job because of my age. I still question whether it's appropriate for the government to control this, but I appreciate it.
The Americans with Disabilities act is different from the age discrimination laws, and has different criteria. An employer has to make reasonable accomodations, but there are more jobs where certain disabilities would clearly disqualify someone than those for which age would disqualify them. Companies and people discriminate in hiring and firing all of the time. If you are hiring an accountant it is legal to discriminate against someone without an accounting degree or experience. There are a fixed set of criteria, determined by our Congress, which can't be used to discriminate. Age just happens to be one of those, end even then, the age of 40 was set as the age when discrimination is actionable. You can hire a 22 yr old instead of a 39 year old because of their age, and nothing can be done.