Tenets of the SAGE Act The proposed SAGE Act (Stop Ageism and Generational Exclusion) is a measure designed to end job discrimination due to a person’s age, young or old. In California, and other states, it may be “illegal” to discriminate in this fashion, but it is not illegal to ask a person’s age either directly or indirectly—at least not in California. This lack of protection leads to the practice of ageism, which is discrimination due to a person’s age. While this type of discrimination more acutely affects older Americans, younger people also come up against it. Regardless of your current age, if you plan to grow older and work while doing so, then you need to support this act now. It is in the best interest of your future. The SAGE Act would put this limitation on all employers: • Potential employers requests for any and all the type of information designed to determine a person’s age would be prohibited by law prior to a job offer. This would include the banning of asking for information such as the following: o Asking for your date of birth on any kind of record, including the infamous I-9 form. There is no reason for an employer to ask you to fill out an I-9 if they do not plan to hire you. Using this form is an easy, “legal”, way to practice ageism. o Asking for the date of your graduation from college. While this information may be useful in some technology fields, it is useless in others. I have a degree in Psychology; it should be as good now as when I received it in 1976. Saying what date I received only goes to show my likely age. o Asking you for your Social Security Number. By using readily available on line tools such as Decoding Social Security Numbers in One Step stevemorse.org/ssn/ssn.html, you can find out when a Social Security Number was issued. In my case, it was 1966, so it is easy to assume I started working around that time. This makes it easy to guess that I am no longer a spring chicken. o Asking you to fill out other types of governmental paperwork that captures your birthday. The one I have seen the most is something called a “Tax Survey” where I have to say if I received any kind of welfare in my life. I don’t understand why any company would ever need this but they surely don’t need it prior to you becoming an employee—unless they want to discover your age. Backers of the SAGE Act feel that prohibiting this kind of probing prior to a job offer makes it nearly impossible to practice ageism. If we do not ban this kind of activity, it will be almost impossible to prove if you are being discriminated against due to your age. However, it could be relatively easy to show ageism after a job offer is made because the Sage Act would also require potential employers to specifically state (meaning no “canned” answers), in writing, why a person’s application was rejected. Of course, there is no way to stop this practice entirely because as we age, our looks change and you could be judged to be a certain age due to them. That is not the case everywhere, though. Many people think that I am in my forties or early fifties when in fact I am a decade or two older than this. I just don’t feel comfortable lying about my age and if I did I could be prosecuted for it. You can see the irony in that. What is more, all companies should welcome a law like this, unless they want to practice ageism. The reason being is that it would save them time and money during the application process by not asking people to fill out a lot of useless forms, which they pay for, that would only go to a landfill later on. Even if a person has to give this information on line, any company would save money on storage space, server capacity, band width use, etc. At this writing, I have contacted my representatives in the California Assembly, Das Williams and Hannah-Beth Jackson, asking them for their support. I will also contact Governor Gerry Brown who should have a sympathetic ear since he is 75 years old and he is WORKING.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:50:03 +0000
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