[PRCo] Re: Labor Turnover at PAT

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Compulsory retirement is legal at any age if the employer is capable of
proving that the worker is no longer able to perform the duties of the
job.  If I am a trolley motorman with eyes correctable to 20:500, I can
be forcibly retired because I can't see the vehicle ahead of me.  If I
am a block mason with degenerative muscle disease so bad that I can't
life a trowel, too bad for me.  Other than inability, and a few
exceptions described below, the compulsory retirement age was raised by
federal fiat more than 20 years ago.  

This is going back so far that I cannot even remember what date to put
on it ... perhaps 25 to 30 years ago there was a ruling (I think U.S.
Department of Labor backed by the Supreme Court) that compulsory
retirement ages were no longer legal at ages 60, 62, or 65.  It was a
least before 1980 because I knew of two court cases which were won at
that time, one against the state of Pennsylvania (Department of
Education) and the other against the Chessie System or C&O.  I knew I
woman with the state DofE who received several years back pay and all
benefits and full retirement out of the suit!  The legal minimum was
pushed up to 70 or 75.  This, however did not preclude a firm from
establishing full retirement at any age, i.e. retirement without
actuarial reduction of benefits for leaving early.  It simply precluded
forcing someone out the door.

In the cases that I cited, the furloughs were so flagrant that there was
no chance that the employers were able to win.  The state Department of
Education had reduced the average age of its work force by a full ten
years!  I also had a friend who worked for the South Shore, but he lost
with the court ruling that simply because C&O owned the CSS&SB, the suit
had be brought by C&O employees and not by his railroad and he was
unable to piggyback on it.  

There are exceptions to the law.  Police, apparently because of a
recognized inability of a person to run long distances, climb walls,
etc., were exempted.  Pennsylvania has a 50 or perhaps 55 year
retirement on State Police.  The lower ranks in the military are
similarly exempted from the law.

Sometime in the 1970s the Railroad Retirement and Social Security
programs were integrated, with RRB retirees receiving a supplemental
check to compensate for the many years they had contributed at much
higher rates than those paid by Social Security workers.  The
supplemental checks were waived if the worker stayed past 60 or 62 or 65
(I forget which).  In this case, the worker was not forced to retire, he
was just having a substantial portion of his pension stripped from him
if he refused to go.  I would call that The Law of the King (i.e. the
King makes the laws).  Kings are noted for that.  Just like the army is
allowed to refuse a GED degree as proof of attainment of a high school
graduation!

The source of my knowledge?  I worked for the Pennsylvania Department of
Labor and Industry from 1968 until 2000 ... some of the material I read
at the time, some was simply peripheral knowledge to my work.  

This doesn't say that a Republican administration hasn't since changed
the rules to favor employers.      

  
HRBran99 at aol.com wrote:
> 
>  The usual rule was 25-years and out the door. Maybe this policy was
> changed or found to be unconstitutional by a court. I do know that in the
> early 1990s it was 25 years then retirement.
> 
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