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Return to Article: Age-based bias complaints on the rise

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  Detective Barnes, as a former memeber of the military and current federal employee who has an interest in law enforcement, I, too have been dismayed by the 37 year cutoff. Nevermind that I workout daily, can do 30+ pullups, but yet the feds say I am "too old". I plan to hopefully join a local or state law enforcement agency, since apparently I am "too feeble" by Uncle Sam's standards. It seems he is the biggest practitioner of age discrimination. I encourage you to stay with your agency for as long as you can, then join a corporate or private security firm who will appreciate your hard work and experience.

  GovExec.com reader Posted July 20, 2004 3:34 PM
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  I am very close to 20 years at my current position. I am 40 years old and have an extensive background in Law Enforcement. I am looking to start a second career only to be disappointed by the 37-year-old rule when applying for an investigators position with a federal agency. Makes me feel great about my career and college degree.

  Nevin Barnes Posted July 9, 2004 9:14 AM
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  Why worry about an aging government work force or a possible 20-30% loss of attrition in a year?!?!?!?...when you can and will be replaced by a younger, lesser paid, lesser experienced, non-U.S. citizen contract workers! The ONLY thing management worries about is them$elve$!!! After 2 years my office has still NOT finalized the A-76 process, and my director was the ONLY job in this office that was NOT compromised! Did I mention the Admini$trator'$ Award he recently received?!?$$$$ It appears to be mind over matter, they don't mind and we don't matter!

  Close to Retirement - Career Federal Employee Posted May 24, 2004 11:18 AM
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  What all of us over 45 need to remember is: this is not going to be handled in a fair and balanced way. The government is breaking the law and the judges know it. They can't afford to give verdicts in favor the old person that messes up the government idea.

  Oh by the way, the idea is for you to leave and say nothing so they can hire some young fresh one at half the pay and see how long they can keep them around

  GovExec.com reader Posted May 24, 2004 7:01 AM
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  They way they are dealing with the upcoming "retirement wave" at my agency is to get rid of the older, higher-seniority - i.e., higher-paid - people by hook or crook and bring in the cheap help. They have used a combination of buyouts, accumulations of small-to-middling annoyances and inconveniences (like bad temporary assignments), great waves of PIPs, and repeated drug testing (fishing trips which usually come up with nothing, but they keep hoping.)

  GovExec.com reader Posted May 21, 2004 3:44 PM
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  Retired from the U.S. Army as a Chief Warrant Officer Three Criminal Investigator in 1991 at the age of 41.

  Army CID told me in 1992 that I was too old to work for them as a civilian fraud investigator!

  Applied for numerous jobs with the federal government as an investigator GS 1811 and was told I was to old at 41 to be a criminal investigator.

  Seems my Army time did not count for a job with the federal government as a criminal investigator. To apply for a criminal investigator job you had to be under the age of 37 and be able to retire by the time you were 55!

  Complained to Congress and everyone else but no one cared, it was the law!

  Now I work as an inspector or investigator in the GS-1801 and GS-1810 series in the DoD doing the same job as a GS 1811 but make less money.

  I am 54 and will be working until I am 62 if possible.

  Yes, age bias is alive and well in the Federal Government.

  Bob Busby Posted May 21, 2004 9:37 AM
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  Good job, Government Executive! Thank you for following developments at EEOC so closely. You quoted Chairwoman Cari Dominguez saying, "'The processing of EEO complaints continues to be plagued with delays governmentwide ... Case-processing statistics are going in the wrong direction.'" Do you remember in the press release last year Ms. Dominguez said she gave her agency a C+ for performance? Oddly, there is no mention of a grade in this year's announcement, but we can conclude 1) EEOC gets a D this year and is nudging closer to failure, and 2) "report cards" are only useful to government managers when they can give themselves good grades.

  Odd, too, that EEOC has purged that 2003 press release from its archive, and it has deleted the FY 2002 Annual Report on the Federal Work Force from its Web site so we cannot check on EEOC and do a year-to-year comparison for ourselves. I suspect they do this to hide the fact that every year they publish slightly different statistics--some added, some deleted, some with different parameters.

  EEOC should publish a public-use database of all its federal sector statistics and stop trying to hide information.

  Valerie Lloyd

  Valerie Lloyd Posted May 21, 2004 9:16 AM
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  In 1999, I was 43 when I filed an EEO complaint against my agency for discrimination based upon race, sex, and age. By January 2003, I was so fed up with the EEO process that I filed my case in District Court. I was certainly naive to believe that the process was guided by timelines as I thought legislation had tightened the processing time for complaint processing! I was appalled when it took an administrative judge over 1 year to make a decision on summary judgment--how are employees being served? Worse yet was the fact that the case was not a candidate for summary judgment! I found the EEOC and the EEO process inefficient, ineffective, and riddled with bias. I relied on a system that turned out to be a failure in meeting the needs of this complainant. During these years, my agency was less than honorable in how I was treated. Needless to say, if I had it to do again, I would NEVER seek the EEO process for relief.

  Prologue: My case was settled in District Court in April 2004 and I will be retiring effective June 5, 2004, with 27 3/4 years at age 48. Over the 5 years awaiting remedy, my career, self-esteem, reputation, and health was degraded by filing an EEO complaint. I suffered financially with nearly $30,000 in legal fees. Suffering the discrimination may have been a better alternative.

  Cheryl Simms Posted May 21, 2004 8:24 AM
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  Like I've been saying for years and OPM just gives it short shrift - the federal workforce is aging rapidly and even though we have a very low attrition today, 2-3%, that could easily balloon to 20-30% in one year. I don't know of a single agency that can withstand losing so much human capital experience at one time.

  And are we ready for this onslaught - of course not. Have we made the federal government a place where young people wish to work - of course not if the demographics continue to show an increasingly older workforce.

  The numbers don't lie - OPM and senior federal HR management can continue to deny the inevitable - or they can proactively work towards lowering the average age in the federal goverment. Over the past ten years I've seen very, very little proactive work in this area.

  Mid-career HR Specialist

  GovExec.com reader Posted May 21, 2004 5:58 AM