Age Discrimination Claims on the Rise
According to the Wall Street Journal, discrimination filings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) went up 15 percent in 2008 compared to 2007, and age discrimination suits in particular showed a dramatic 29 percent increase over the previous year. Click here to read the WSJ Article.
The conventional wisdom is that discrimination claims go up in a down economy -- more people lose their jobs through layoffs or heightened performance standards, and a certain percentage of those affected will file discrimination claims. That doesn't necessarily explain the spike in certain types of claims, however, such as the recent increase in age discrimination claims.
So why the spike in claims? It could be as simple as an aging workforce, but we suspect more is at work. In a troubled economy, many employers focus their layoffs on more highly-compensated employees, and that can have a greater impact on older workers (while specifically targeting older workers for layoff is unlawful, it may be lawful to select higher-paid workers). Also, older workers have a harder time finding replacement employment, and that might lead them to file claims against their former employers rather than move on.
These are challenging times for employers, and now more than ever it pays to be careful when conducting layoffs and terminations.
WSJ Reports EFCA Unlikely to Pass Soon
According to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is not likely to become law in the first 100 days of the Obama Administration. Because Republicans are threatening a filibuster, congressional Democrats are likely to instead focus their early efforts on two other low-hanging fruit: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would extend the statute of limitations under civil-rights laws for bringing suits against employers over pay; and the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen remedies under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 for women.
If passed, EFCA would be the most wide-ranging revision to federal labor law in 50 years. It would, among other things, require employers to recognize a union as the exclusive bargaining agent for its employees based solely on a "card check" process rather than a secret ballot election. It is expected to drastically increase union organizing and unionization rates.
Threats of a Senate filibuster and a presidential veto prevented EFCA's passage in 2008, but the labor movement and congressional Democrats hoped that a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate would allow its passage in 2009. We're not ready to write EFCA off just yet - what remains to be seen is if a compromise version will sufficiently appease the act's proponents while weakening opposition. Stay tuned to the World of Work for more updates.
