Never too old to be young

Forty may be too young to get a discount on the early bird buffet – but it’s plenty old enough to claim age discrimination.

The Supreme Court yesterday made it easier for workers at the ripe old age of 40 to sue when bosses try to dump them for being over the hill.

The justices, who have an average age of 70.4, expanded job protections for workers over 40, who now make up close to half the nation’s workforce. But the decision also redefines what it means to hit the Big 4-0 – even as forty-somethings like Yankee flamethrower Randy Johnson and sex-symbol Sarah Jessica Parker keep making their peers proud on the diamond and the screen.

In other words, George Clooney, age 41, is – legally speaking – old.
Brad Pitt, the one-time “Sexiest Man Alive,” 41, is old.
Madonna, 46, old.

The court’s ruling left some middle-aged New Yorkers shaking their heads. “I’m 47 and I’m still plenty young,” said Roger Ifill, a security supervisor at the New Yorker Hotel. “When I usually think of age discrimination, I think of people over 50 and 60.”

The ruling grew out of a lawsuit by 30 Mississippi cops – all over the age of 40 – who complained they were being paid unfairly when compared with new, younger officers.

The justices tossed the cops’ case, but opened the door to new discrimination lawsuits from people in their 40s who formerly couldn’t claim to be victims of age bias.
“It means you have another tool in your arsenal for fighting age discrimination,” said Laurie McCann, a senior attorney for the American Association of Retired Persons.

The court’s decision reaffirmed that people over 40 are shielded by the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act from unfair treatment in hiring and pay.

“I don’t think of myself as old,” said Amy Fidler, a 43-year-old employee of Nickelodeon. “But I can understand how my age may seem old in certain industries.”

Older employees say they still have plenty to offer at work.

“I’m 50 and I feel like 25 in all respects,” said Kamal Sayeed, an electrical engineer. “For the job I do, age is better.”

The government predicts that by 2010, more than half of all workers will be older than 40. But Abraham Heleg, a 72-year-old counter worker at a midtown deli shook his head at the notion that anyone in their 40s passes for “old.”

“Forty years old?” Heleg said. “That’s very young – that’s like a baby to me.”

Source: New York Daily News