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Originally Posted by ASU2003
40 years old is old now? It seems to me that the company was setup in a way to keep the upper management and the younger people pushing papers and making things work. But the middle management, advertisers, secretaries and design engineers (once their product is to a marketable state) would be 'disposable' if they didn't want to grow, but just make what they have, use the same marketing, and produce the same amount of products.
Now, if they were firing people 60 and older because they didn't want to pay retirement benefits or something, that is another story. Actually, the fact that people still have to work at 60 means they have been living an expensive lifestyle and should have been saving money. It does prevent the teens and twenty somethings from entering the workforce and gaining experience, responsibility & money.
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My dad is 61 and he certainly doesn't have to work; he's saved more than enough money to retire very comfortably. Technically, he's retired out of one state system, and will retire out of another in a year or so (he's in public education). He could have retired a few years ago, but he keeps going because 1) he loves what he does, 2) he feels that he is still needed by his staff, and 3) he cares about his school and staff and wants to make sure that everything is as good as it can be before he retires. He wants to make sure that there is someone to take his place, and that takes time and training--school administrators are so hard to find these days that a lot of states are offering retire/rehire deals. It seems no one wants to be in charge any more.
My SO's dad is in a much different situation. He works for a major computer/printer/etc manufacturer. He is one of the lead engineers in their printing division. This company is looking to cut 300-400 jobs from their local campus in the printing division. He's survived several bouts of layoffs before, but it's still a situation where nobody knows who's going to get cut, and because he's a senior employee and makes considerably more than his younger, less experienced counterparts, he's definitely at risk for having his job cut. It sucks, but he's financially prepared for it, and has been since the first round of layoffs many years ago. He feels he can't retire--he says he's too young to do so (51) and enjoys the work that he does for this company. I don't think he's too terribly worried about being laid off; he's a very accomplished engineer, and very employable elsewhere. But yes, I do feel that this company is trying to cut older employees to 1) get rid of the higher salaries they must pay more senior workers, and 2) to cut down on the benefits/etc they must pay once those senior workers retire. I have to say that for his sake I'm glad for this ruling; it will make his company think twice before dismissing someone just because they make more (and this company has definitely done that before, regardless of the employee's contribution to the company).