State of California

Our department has an older workforce of 22 employees. 2 months ago one retired and one quit. Their jobs were advertised and filled, one internally and one coming from the East coast. Both of these replacements are under 30 years old.

One week after the first replacement started work and three weeks before the second started, Management announced that there would be a layoff, due to a reduction in indirect base. When questioned as to why we were hiring two replacements during a layoff, we were told that they did not know next years base would be so low and that the company had already made commitments to these two people and that they could not back out at this time.

Today the lay-off notices were issued to five employees, the youngest being 51 and the average time at the company is around 20-25 years.

Is there an age discrimination issue here or does the law allow for inert management.

Were the older employees able to perform their current duties? Did the new employees have more qualifications that made them more capable of performing the tasks? Was their job expendable or were they replaced by the younger employees?

A layoff that is negatively impacts older workers compared to others could be problematic as it may be seen as potential age discrimination. For that reason, employers should do a pre-layoff analysis, determining if various groups of persons in protected statuses are disportionately impacted by the layoff. If it appears that there are imbalances, employers should take care to consider alternatives that will make the negative impacts more proportionate to the total work force. You can learn more about discrimination against older workers by looking at the following website: www.eeoc.gov (http://www.eeoc.gov).

An article about the protection of older workers in a reduction in force or a layoff is found at the following website: http://www.benefitslawgroupofchicago.com/PDF/EmployerReductioninForce.PDF It is rather technical so if please let me know if you have any questions.

By the way, California discrimination law protects employees who are working for employers with five or more employees (in comparison to federal law which protects employees working for employers with 15 or more employees). Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.