Much has been made by the recent news that McDonald’s will hire older workers because they cannot find enough younger ones.
Teenagers, it appears, have better things to do than flip burgers, leaving seniors as the company’s last resort to fill much-needed positions. Many champions of older workers’ rights have claimed this as
a victory, however, happy to see that thousands of un- or underemployed seniors will be offered jobs. Such a conclusion is perhaps understandable given the seismic cultural shift that is currently taking place with regard to age and work. Rather than end one’s career at a predetermined age, usually 65, to embark on a life of leisure in a sunny, warm place, most of today’s sexagenarians and septuagenarians want to work as long as they possibly can (and stay put in their homes). Besides the obvious reason- money-, work is a prime source of identity for individuals, and offers a reason to get up in the morning. Research shows that having some kind of meaning and purpose in life is linked to both physical and emotional health, and often adds years to longevity.
But is this announcement by McDonald’s really cause for celebration? Older people, especially baby boomers in their 60s and 70s, need and deserve jobs that offer greater rewards than those to be had by working at a fast food restaurant for minimum or near minimum wage. Blatant, although hardly ever mentioned or acknowledged, ageism in many, if not most, American companies is preventing such a thing, however. Job applicants with college degrees from the 1970s are typically promptly eliminated from consideration even though they may be otherwise ideally qualified for a management position. If anything, one would expect people of different ages to be eagerly welcomed into organizations as an expression of diversity- a prime initiative of human resource departments- but this is simply not the case.
The unfortunate truth is that discrimination against older people in the American workplace is commonplace (and illegal), a product of our deeply embedded aversion to people considered past their prime. “It would be awkward and embarrassing to have an older person work for or alongside me,” younger friends of mine have explained to me in my attempt to understand the underlying reasons for ageism in the workplace. True, perhaps, but in decades past white people eventually got used to working alongside black people and men alongside women, making age the only remaining demographic criterion in which it is acceptable to discriminate (often in the name of something like “overqualification”). Imagine the legal and social consequences if millions of American employees casually mentioned their discomfort in having to supervise or work for an African American, woman, Latino, gay, or disabled person. A huge class action suit would result if the same kind of bias being shown by Corporate America towards older people was based on a job applicant’s gender, race, or other biological attribute, something a clever lawyer might want to think about.
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