Unknown Speaker  00:06
Women's by feminist kinds of readings through crediting it. Next year is the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage. And we have planned on the national steering committee, a year long series of events for women's suffrage. I also represent the Department of Labor women's Bureau through a number of projects I've done and they are also celebrating as you heard from Dolores this morning, 75 years of a women's women's suffrage passed in the United States. So now that we're starting, I'm supposed to lay the background and groundwork for all these what the issues we're talking about under one person aging. And some of the reasons that I'm able to do this currently is because I had been chairing the National Advisory Committee on work opportunities for AARP. And we have been looking at through the wonderful resources that they have, both through their research department, which Sarah Rick's used to be head of research for women's research and public policy. And so joined AARP has had an our research and our public policy issues. So I have very current information. I also it's always been an interest of mine, because I've always done counseling for women, both career counseling for college students, when I worked in the college, and I worked up and did management skills training for women who I saw did not know and there was nothing being taught. So some of the that is reflected in and we're going to make a presentation and then hopefully you will ask any of us later when we're finished any questions that you might have to see if one of us can't answer them. But what I want to bring to you is some background of the changing nature of work as we move towards the 21st century. And really, we read articles, but it's not really impressed us yet. And that's one of the things we talked about hierarchy, how are we going to get the message to the average citizen about what the nature of work is and what it's changing. So I will start off by saying that there are two social trends that are converging as our nation moves towards a new century, our population is growing. particularly older, we hear about the rising our percentage of older people, and it's about 12%. Now that will get larger, and we're talking about 65 and older. The baby boomers that we're trying to attract in our organization, get the age of 50 is when our membership starts are now in their mid 40s. And we're you know will be a huge difference in our society. So that and women are continuing to enter the labor force and record numbers. So those two trends are very important. Older workers and particular older women workers will be an increasingly important ingredient in maintaining our strong economy and our vital society. And they act recently in USA Today. And they run these little survey spots on the bottom of the front page. They showed that 78% of women in their 40s are currently in the workforce. How do we define older worker? Because you hear about older workers? Well, a worker is protected under the Age Discrimination Act as Google was at the age of 40. And when my son turned 40, last year, I said Well, guess what you're not protected as a worker when he was not happy to hear that that was where he felt. Most older workers studies though we use ages 45 to 65 to define older workers. And in a recent study of the women's Bureau and Rochester was wonderful. I had conducted this study in Rochester I midlife working women.

Unknown Speaker  03:38
They had defined young and old midlife working women, and we used our 35 to 54. And to define midlife working women of the 35 year olds had told us that they will experience in certain fields discrimination, and they felt that they were discriminated against both from everything ranging from the fact that they were interviewed for jobs by very dumb young people that younger than they were and also by people who live in out of the workforce and then came back and had all these feelings out they weren't current, so that you know, age discrimination, feelings or actual reality can exist at age 35, usually 45. AARP have a lot of press this February when they announced the findings of a first national study to measure age discrimination against older job seekers. Because we had, we were looking at hiring, retaining and retraining older workers and I think it's the wrong timing given the downsizing that's going on. But even so they conducted the survey, the fair employment Council of Greater Washington did conduct a survey. What they did is across the country to 775, large firms and employment agencies. They mailed this to resumes and resumes more equally educated people out Unlike they were the same sex, I think they were both men. And they were equally experienced and what they can do that the same types of crap. But they had the experience that was required for a particular job, there was a travel and these were not male cold, they went to job openings. One applicant, actually age was 32, and the other was 54. The only indication of age on these will be your college degree or training, which is why I always tell people don't put the year I just put the fact that you have been trained. The survey revealed that age discrimination in hiring occurred more than 25% of the time of the 29 tests that they apply. In order to determine this, the older applicant receives a less favorable response and 26.5% of the tests. So that was a significant thing and was played up in some of the PAP journals, I think in the Wall Street Journal, and also in the radio. I'd like to certainly lay some sort of an information base so that our for the further discussion and so forth by discussing trends and issues that affect all American workers, as we approach the 21st century, and specific issues affecting older working women. There are a number of profound changes that are taking place in the workplace that Prime Minister have to match the far reaching effects on our society. The developments are closely related. And they are a kind of revolution in the world of work is the SP this country over the past century. And we they talk about it almost as significant as the industrial revolution. But that's putting we don't know what it will mean. What has happened is we know that the there's a huge drive for corporate survival in an increasingly competitive and globalized market. And that's reflected in the media every day. And this environment companies are portable. And, for instance, insurance companies process claims in Ireland, again, what we're looking at is lower wages. It doesn't matter where your business is. And we know about you know, our fear of having lots of pieces to have our work done in other countries, but they are in Rochester, where I live paychecks Corporation started a number of years ago and paychecks is now on the big board. And what it had built his business on is they realized there were so many small businesses and they had to worry about bookkeeping areas, personnel, keeping benefits, straight tax reporting, and they do this for all these offices is a relatively small they pay people I mean, they have payrolls, they have become extremely successful. So that is a sort of a tenor of the times to hiring out leasing out somebody else to do what is in the long run less expensive for you to do.

Unknown Speaker  07:45
That workers are now considered in some cases in some manner doing as throw away. The contingent workforce, which started slowly in the 1980s has now grown to include have only part time worker which we know women make up over 50% part time workers and always have for a variety of reasons. But they were talking about leasing. Yesterday, I was at the UN planning conference that Doris Costello spoke about. And Lita, I heard that there was a school district here, that was now leasing of almost all of its services except teaching. And they may get to that point, because they can easily do that, like higher education has done for adjunct and that affected women the most since they were the last in, they never got the benefits and the full time jobs or the security gap security. So businesses contract for food services, I remember when we really sweated over whether our university wanted to go to McDonald's to do all the food services, we finally did, because it was easier, we didn't have to worry about all these workers always leaving. And we were sure hospitals do a lot of small businesses contract maintenance, particularly, as well as food service. And of course, we have the new technologies and advances that computer networks have satellite connections, the development of the worldwide super information highway, which we don't even understand how it's going to impact us, but it will impact every person tremendously. Both job wise consumer, as consumers as employees, as big business, little business, whatever. And we will have to work differently. On it's unnecessary, of course, to have geographically based businesses and workers and many kinds of businesses. And one of my women friends based in Boston had left her job finally to go out on her own as a contingent worker and leave it is not easy. It's very frightening. You work from contract to contract. And she says Guess what, I just got a contract which will keep me till July but who knows what happens after July and you provide for your own benefits and you worry about being disabled and disability insurance is too expensive and you don't know what to do. And of course she's a single head of household what else is out there? So anyway, but what she's working on, and she realized after a number of years of taking some additional courses, that she had a skill, she does facilities management, and she does a computerized, she did this somewhat for her work. And she does it worldwide. So she finally invested in the best computer system and computer graphics, and kept yourself in, you know, up to date. And that's what she sells to people. Because what she's doing now is what they're calling the hotel in concept, which is that many large companies do not have separate offices for people and people travel and I hold all of my children travel all over the country to do their business all the time. They sit down, and it's like a hotel office, everything is there that they might need, but it's not their own. And they have the information computer base that they can call up on the network, anything they need to know about their business, and everything is easily there. And of course, we've got the faxes, and we've got all these other things. Therefore, you don't need a central geographic base. It's less expensive. Yesterday, Bill app sub talked was at launch. And I've always talked about Kinkos because I spent all my time in Kinkos. For those of you who may not know it's a it's a franchise operation, which provides a tremendous need when they started I saw this are open 24 hours a day. They backs, they copy, they publish, they have computers that you can put your own discs and they do resumes in like in front of your eyes. And you see the TV ads nice. He said No problem. I'll get this done by tomorrow all over the world. And where did he get it with his boss does not as he did at Kinkos. And I gotta tell you Pecos was so busy. They've been large, so big in my neighborhood, that I don't even know how to walk in there at something new business. What what does it say all these people are working on their own. They're not hiring their own departments, like when I worked at Bausch and Lomb to just do reproductive work to Dutch through this secretaries, you know, so that's a different thing to think about. And the only reason that a lot of these people come to a central point in a company or cooperation is to form a team to brainstorm with people skilled in a specific area of need, in order to achieve a result. Teams are selected from a skill bank, and they have specific tasks to achieve, for instance, new product development, marketing strategies, sales operations. So what that means is that workers in so many cases become a number in a town. What are the talents we need, where we look to get them, and therefore they are dehumanized. They are dehumanized because you maybe feel fine once you get the job, but you have no benefits, you have no retirement, you are just a number that does a job that can achieve something.

Unknown Speaker  12:49
So that the biggest growing and successful companies nationwide are Kelly Services and manpower. They you see their ads, and what manpower now is giving benefits to their regular part time people, they will have some health benefits, if in fact, you've worked so many hours in so many times for them, so that they recognize that that's a need. And I found out from talking with one of the head people from Kelly that they offered workers over 50, free memberships, and AARP. So that's interesting. We know that women comprise two thirds of all part time workers. Some of the women choose to have more flexibility to raise children to take care of disabled family members are similar. But many midlife and older women work part time involuntarily. And you've heard a lot about involuntary unemployment and so forth. But that now be because it while they talk about well, people only want to work part time they don't want to work part time. They have they're forced to, because that's all there is. They're unable to find full time jobs, they haven't had an opportunity, in many cases, particularly women to receive advanced skill training. They don't know what to do alternator tape, they can't afford to have what usually is a very high, this growing trend not only for women, it's also happening to them. For the men, this changes everything because men usually are heads of households. We see the new trend and unemployment figures going down. But in fact, where are people employed that 55 plus people who have been downsized or right size, whatever you want to call it, are taking jobs at lower salary levels and lower level than they had because they can't find them. And so therefore they're employed and they don't appear on the unemployment. But as the Department of Labor will tell you, this is a new that we've never had this happen in our history. There are jobs being created but they're at lower levels of lower salary using these experience people. One of the I was talking to one of the colleges and with some of them to look at placing their their graduate students and their computer Science graduates which numbers of years ago, they had no trouble placing they can place this year because more experienced older workers have taken the AP level job. So those are things that we have to think about about to. The trend, of course, has improved for women has included brakes and horse fork history, occupational segregation, which we've heard a lot about pay inequities. And therefore, as we're going to hear later, if this contributes to women's lower lifetime earnings relative to men with the consequences of lower social security benefits, and the reason why women over 70 are primarily large group and poverty. Therefore, it's going to impact all of us as we look at the responsibility that the government or all of us who can feed into what will become financially responsible for just people who cannot become remain independent on their own. Other changes affecting the workforce and due to the competitive corporate environment are workers impacted by dislocation. And there's some relocation that people can relocate, they keep looking around for places in the countries of which the economy is better downsizing or rightsizing, resulting in loss of benefits, health insurance and retirement plans. And most of these affected workers I midlife and older,

Unknown Speaker  16:22
some of them are surplus, some of the jobs are not needed anymore. So that they, you know, they don't have not only because they're laid out, but because their job is no longer needed. A statistic, of course, I mentioned showed any people do find new jobs, but certainly in lower ones. So what I've discussed are some three fundamental trends which impact the workforce restructuring of American business, the growth of the contingent workforce, and the decline of corporate paternalism. Those are big, big changes. And in the Special Publication of the Conference Board, which is a highly respected publication, nationally, a big business with AARP published a new reality for the workforce and titled career self management. What it means is you have responsibility to take charge of your own career planning for skill development and education, updating your career and job advancement. And most importantly, you have responsibility for your own retirement, financial planning. And workers today are not looking at, it's here, but they're not seeing all of these issues impact women workers, but older women workers have specific edge issues because women do not in large numbers hold the higher paying jobs, they usually not worked in careers, as long as men of the same age, they have little or no retirement funds. And they're most likely the caregivers for an elderly family member, which impacts not only their physical but emotional energy, and certainly leads to as we know pay back to part time work or leaving the workforce. And on average, women live longer than that, but unfortunately never lived as well as another trend that's increasing and which we last year introduced some had introduced in legislation almost a year ago, when pensions and divorce. The fastest growing group of women initiate a divorce is age 50. And then over. And that's really interesting between the younger women who we see a little more stubborn that the percentage is not as high as it was a number of years ago, we see a large growing percentage of women doing art, what does that mean? It means that they have less money. And they have to go out to work and they've been there's a large group of displaced homemakers.

Unknown Speaker  18:44
their standard of living certainly is reduced. And they don't have the training opportunities for better pay and non traditional jobs. And the reason that I'm working in the area have a Council for Women non traditional employment. That's the only place I keep telling these women where you can earn more money. You can't subsist on minimum wage jobs, service jobs, clerical jobs go out I've been peddling jobs and Department of Transportation which lots women workers, and they're not all construction jobs. There's lots of insight jobs, high school diploma online, and they start between 750 and $9 an hour in our area. And women are sort of leery about taking it. Yes, there is harassment. But the women who have done have done very well. They've got to learn that there's a change. The gap in earnings of course, as you would expect between women and men is even greater for older women workers because while women and general earn approximately 72% of what men are women workers aged 45 to 64 earn less than 64% of what men and probably you know lower. Women of colors we know percent wise have less education and are more likely to be single heads of households and earn significantly less. One of the black like black women in my mid life working Women's Group was working at a minimal paying job and help as a health they had children was on welfare was trying to take a course to advance. And she said she was teaching her daughter, which you never do about. She never knew there was another way to live. She never had a role model. She said, I only had a role model, I could see what I might possibly become do. But she said, women are survivors. And I'm a survivor. And I'm going to make it and none of us question. She was fantastic. And she was 42. Given the current employment situation, what are the employment prospects for the number of growing women? Do the I have these questions, and I'm throwing out to you that you can consider because these are some significant questions. So what are employment prospects for the growing number of older women, all of our whole population is going on. And what we're going to see by the year 2005, is the largest number of workers will be what we call auto workers, because the baby boomers the largest population, they will be in their 50s. So while there's no, today's older workers won't have jobs, the workforce will be older. And that's why they say there will be need for young differently trained people, and the largest group of people come into the workforce are Democrats and women. And therefore the younger people will be in different jobs, and there will be a need for them as a percentage of them because of the growth of population growth will be smaller. So that is interesting, too. But that's one question. Do the young working women today face a brighter future than their older counterparts? We don't know. Will they be economically secure in their older years? How can the business sector respond to the aging of its workforce? Who should be responsible for training and educating and updating the skills of older workers? And what public policy should we adapt? We heard a couple of things need to be done out equity for non working, so to speak, women who work stay in the home, we've been trying to get things like that through for ages. Those are just some of the big questions. But as more and more women enter the workforce and remained there for longer periods of time, as we heard, because we can't afford not to. And as that workforce continues to age, the fortunes of older women workers will have increasingly profound consequences for our entire nation. I just wanted to show you some of the public indexes and I can pass around. The reason I put the addresses here is if you pick a number off the back, you can write the contingent workforce midlife and older women, women's health issues taking action. That's just another one. Returning to the job market, a woman's guide to a plan a plan, how to stay employable, a guide for midlife and older worker, working age, which comes out about four times a year. And this particular was a special issue on helping older women balance the growing demands of work and family. And I didn't even remember the growing issue of grandparents taking care of grandchildren, which also impacts tremendous. And I think those are the ones that brought with me. The women on the board. So that's my basic information on turnover, some other frightening. So I reached out

Unknown Speaker  23:18
to him like named a immediate action good, because I was talking at lunch with someone who was asking me what this was all about. And as I was trying to get a toenail sketch, she said that so depressing. So I think I'll edit it a whole lot. There isn't a little bit of good news in that certainly the percentage of people over 65 living in poverty has fallen since 1967 When it was about 28%. But a very big portion of the responsibility for that comes from Social Security because of course, many of those people saw the security had not been in effect during their entire work life. And of course, the definition of poverty is so low, you can hardly even count it. But women do have about a 70% greater chance than men living in poverty in their old age. And that includes counting the near for not just poverty level but 50% of poverty level. Just to review how how pensions relate so directly to what you've learned on the life of course, when most when we say pensions most of us think of what I call the old fashioned traditional defined benefit plans or you can substitute the word promised or defined when the employer promised you a benefit of X number of dollars, based on your years of service and on your salary level. either averaged over your entire career or hopefully more favorable to you, over the last few years of your career. Some of you, if any of you are in academia and work for where you have a state or a state pension, this, you still may have this, and many big corporations still have this. But it has been replaced largely and increasingly by, instead of promising you a benefit, they promised a certain contribution defined contribution where they say, We don't know how much will be in your next day, but we will promise to contribute such as so percentage for you. So that puts the responsibility on you then, to invest it for one thing, usually, you have to decide how that money gets invested. It also gives you therefore, the exposure to the risk and investment fluctuations, whereas before the company had to pay you that no matter what 401 K plans, that's a form of defined contribution that many of you probably heard about. Or if you're in the nonprofit sector, you probably call them tax sheltered annuities. Sometimes the employer didn't you contribute at all to such plans. And the responsibility has been shifting more and more to us as individuals. But even when the employer does contribute, it's still going to be based on a percentage of pay. And so still, if you earn less, you're going to have less in pension, and it's still going to obviously pan naturally, if you work there for a long time, your nest egg will be larger than if you work there for a short time. So the same factors follow us through our how much we earn and, and how long we stay there. Sit payments under the defined benefit plan actually have an additional disadvantage for women that sometimes gets overlooked. That is their set and inflation therefore keeps ruining what they'll buy every year. And since we live longer, even that takes us harder. The other source of retirement income besides pensions for most of us, primarily courses, Social Security. And of course, it also is based on time weighted wage actor and deliver years of service. I want to talk about ways you might work toward reforming those two things in in it. But first, I want to again emphasize that just as we said in the 70s that women are ones man away from welfare. It turns out that women's income is so tiny to whether or not they're married, we stay out of the workforce on average about 11 and a half years. And of course, we tend to work be more in the part time as you said not always by choice, but because there are not other alternatives.

Unknown Speaker  28:16
But married women are considerably less likely to actually live in poverty, about 6% of them do, about 24% of the horsemen do and the poor peep women who are only separated and not formally divorced, get hit extra hard about 42% of those people are poor, partly events because sometimes the reason you're not divorced is because you can't afford the divorce. Or it's a cultural or religious thing. But the reason for that is that pension law also ties married couple together and you can lose that bond. You suffer financially as well. Wife is entitled to or a husband to a wife actually pinch and mom use neuter gender, or gender neutral, neuter gender I like, because whether or not it's the man who earns more or has the pension or the woman, they still, the same rules apply technically, but because women do take more time out of the workforce to be caregivers in most cases and do work at lower wages. Even though the rules are the same. The results still ends up that we have less money. A married person is entitled to half the spouse's pension, if it falls in in the ERISA law, which most of them do. So it is important to remember if you are divorced, be sure to put that on the bargaining table. There actually are attorneys who either overlooked deliberately or by just playing air to even put that chip on the table. But paying change must be divided between the spouses provide you a spouse, or if you don't get a divorce, you would have to consent if you wanted your spouse to take that money in any way that did not protect you. Because you do have the right to insist on a joint and survivor annuity that would pay as long as you live as well, as long as he lives, it's just that then your benefit is less any kind of annuitization, that guaranteed income for life, probably is going to pay you less than you could get if you invested the money on your own, because you can bet the insurance company is not going to promise any more than their 100% Sin sure to be able to earn with very conservative estimates. But nonetheless, that is protection for women who are married. And it has enhanced as the statistics show have played a big role in whether or not we live in poverty, if we're married, and we share these things, we're less likely to 60% of the widows over age 85 are poor, but only that 80% of them are not poor before their husbands died. So the tie is really very close. Separated women, of course, are at the mercy of their spouse if they are willing to share if they can find them. So they really don't have these legal claims. And of course, women who were never married, while they're going to have all of the lower pay, and so on, at least they planned on that hopefully, or as they start continuing. They I think what catches a lot of women. So I've learned, as you said, with the divorce rate increasing among older women is that we spend our lives our young lives often being caregivers, and thinking that we have this joint pot of gold. And if indeed that turns out not to be the case, then it's we really do suffer financially. So one of the important things for all of us to work on educating youngsters, when it sounds so cynical, though, to tell young women that they have 50% chance of having their marriage in the newborn, and they better not count on it, and so on how to do that and more optimistic sounding way. It's really important to do it though, because it's the reality I think I read recently, a woman in her 30s now does have a 50% chance of divorce. And so it has become, as they say, a mainstream experience. And at least if you always planned accordingly, you're still going to have more income, because you're still going to earn left for even the same work in many cases. But hopefully, you did at least do some of this retirement planning a little bit more seriously, because you knew you're going to have to be self reliant.

Unknown Speaker  33:13
One of the things about Social Security that many people object to is that married women can have what's called dueling time money if they worked a number of years. Of course, under Social Security, if you're married, you can choose the higher of what your credits would buy for you based on your own earnings or half of your spouse's. Therefore, for many of us, again, taking the half the spouses turns out to be more money. This means we worked all these years. And we're not collecting anything for what we put in some people's, their income number of proposals to address this. Some people say that we should make the whole credit during a marriage, put in one big pool and then split it down the middle. Other people say we should decrease the spousal benefit so that you're more likely to qualify on your own earnings. There are a number of proposals that people kick around as a privileged, educated middle income woman I feel we better perhaps first spend our energy keeping Social Security generally from being eroded, though, because all of these spousal protections while they don't help me, help vast number that's why even drastically more women are not in poverty. Now. We've have seen even just this leak, again put into concrete proposals cut in cost of living under Social Security, and another increase in a normal return Earning age, which some people would argue also affects women more because we tend to have chronic things. And often people retire not because they're just financially secure and tired of working. But because health wise, they're not up to it anymore. And men often go out with a big blowout to overgeneralize, I realized, many women have long chronic painful things that like arthritis that makes it difficult for a long period of time. Another proposal for reforming Social Security is that it is based on the assumption that you have 40, good work years, and you've worked for 35 Those 40 years. So when they average your years and your earnings together, they allow five, zero years down the road, you can earn nothing for five years, and have it or low amounts in hand and drop out and the average. Well, of course, women, as I said earlier, on average are out in the workforce for a little over 11 years. And so all those zeros, it's just like back when you were in school, and he got a zero for one grade, it didn't take long to pull your average down. So some other proposals for reforms include adding zero years for divorced limb, and maybe you could get five extra zero years, or maybe women generally who did have children could have 10 instead of five, and so on. So there are a number of ways to address this dual entitlement problem, and the fact that women are out of the workforce, but all of them would cost money. Some people argue social security should not be the vehicle through which we address poverty, or inequities in the workplace. To begin with, that we should work on those problems as being the primary one. And one of my concerns, frankly, I don't have statistics to back it up, necessarily, is that

Unknown Speaker  37:11
young person now who's in it 20 years old, if someone if they did put in 15% of their pay the employer share their share into a stock based mutual fund. And for 45 years to like 65, they probably could have much bigger benefit than what Social Security will pay them. But the basis of Social Security was that we would get away from having rich people on one side and welfare people on the earth. Right now it has very wide support, it's probably the most popular public program. And if we break this link between configuring these benefits, as something that we earn as a right with money we put in, if we instead start means testing for it and say, Well, you don't need it as bad since you're a millionaire, then that millionaire will quit supporting it. And so will Oliver Franz and on down the line, and we will be back to welfare versus wealthy. So in my opinion, the low most single person can collect this year in hand was $1,140. To the millionaire, that's still going to be pocket change, but I'd rather see us pay it to the millionaire and keep that millionaire support. So it's all crumble. So there are many other opinions about that, of course, I mean, a lot of people have different views. But I think it's under such seeds very vulnerable right now to attend. And it has saved so many people from dire need, that my own biases that we should work to preserve it rather than right now focus on getting more fragmented, as far as what we can do for private pension. One. One thing of course, as people who do have middle incomes and more education than most people is that we can take we can at least for ourselves, start planning ahead and and teach our relatives and everyone else we meet to do the same. We can do if we're married general survivor plan that can include things like saving whenever you have a choice, save things like IRAs or tax deferred annuities, things where you can control when you start pulling that money out until later. So it does become an inflation kicker for the woman who's more likely to live longer fruit capital, or buy life insurance while you're young in your 30s While it's cheap, so that that can become an inflation kicker for the widow in later years. There's. But what we need to do for other people is primarily, we've got to somehow get across to teenagers without sounding like cynics that it is important to be self reliant in this regard. And that it's very important to get some investment education because those of us in the pension business worry much less about how guaranteed that money in there, how big is the pool behind the the federal guarantee program, what we worry about as a consumer is so inclined to put money in low interest, things that they consider safe, that they're never going to earn enough to keep from starving to death. So we need to get out there and preach the gospel of shutting your eyes jumping off the cliff and taking a little bit of risk, it's only way you've had a fighting chance of beating inflation. People also can when they quit jobs to take what little they do have saved up and go spend it, it doesn't sound like much at the time, perhaps a very small amount. But if you do that, over your lifetime, you end up with nothing. And you forget that that $4,000, when you're 25 Has it will double every decade, even at just 7%. And so the impact on the future is very great. In in public policy, allowing some kind of Ira type savings for women, especially women, because it's the situation now stands. If you're married to a person who does have a pension plan, then even though you may work part time or have no pension or, or opportunity through your employer save pre tax, you still cannot deduct an IRA. Unless your income is relatively low. There are income caps on that. But that essentially cut out many women who work

Unknown Speaker  42:10
in the workforce and don't have pension coverage in their own right. They can't even if they have the money, they still can't save and our attacks fake papers basis because their spouse may or may not be around the time of retirement Canada has a plan. So that's one thing we could work for on the national level with me with cost less than reforming Social Security. Also pushing for including part timers. Now they're excluded by definition, maybe always isn't always close to always it's written right in the pension plan documents that doesn't harbor cyber city

Unknown Speaker  42:51
of ours, it's over 20 hours. depends on the company.

Unknown Speaker  42:54
Yeah, put a minimum, right? Increasing portability, because we can very few women, less than half the women have been at their current job for even four years. Even if your employer does put money in you usually cannot keep it you don't become fast until five years. So we lose a lot by changing jobs. Often, people in the university system have had portability for a long time through the tea to craft program. So they may not even realize that this is unusual, but it's very unusual. The only industry to expect sophisticated. Actually, we need some kind of way for that to be part of this private pension system. It also would help if we could use our final pay years when there are defined benefit calculations made rather than the whole career years. So all of these things, of course, the employer doesn't have to give a pension anyhow. So reforming the private pension plans would be nice. But in fact, an employer can just say they aren't going to do that at home, no one requires it. So it all comes back to educating ourselves and young girls as they're growing up that this is an area where just like all the other things they're going to have to pay for. It's just part of the bill of living and increasingly an individual responsibility to take care of it. I think I'll push for now because it's hard to tell whether this is an area I wanted to get into more it's probably better to wait to the question and see if there are aspects of this of interest to particular ones in the group, I'm sure to hear about it is in fact illegal to discriminate against us because of age and they often want to leave

Unknown Speaker  44:58
I suppose what I'm actually going to do is with this case tell you a little story. But I should mention two caveats at the outset. One is it's not very happy stories, as you might understand. And secondly, there was no final outcome yet I had hoped we would have had a decision from the judge at this point. We don't just I can't tell you what the outcome is. My client was 55 years old when she was terminated from the conglomerate size employer that she had worked for for 14 years, he worked in the clerical slash secretarial capacity. And before I tell you more about the facts, let me tell you what I think was made the case rather unique and also quite difficult to deal with. Were the last three years of her employment prior to her termination. She worked under a man who was constantly making age based derogatory comments, things like she worked, but she lived in New Jersey when she couldn't get in, in a snowstorm. He said, when to step aside, in most discrimination cases, you're probably aware you don't have these so called smoking guns. People who even intend to discriminate are fairly sophisticated these days, they'll come out in advance, and they will send you an engraved card. In this case, however, this man have the gall to say, for example, when she called in and was unable to come in because of a snowstorm, he said, Well, if you can't get an old lady, why don't you retire and constantly, constantly would use the term old lady. She needed a better chair that gave him a better back support. When she asked for that, again, he said about 10. And she didn't for several, I think, fairly obvious reasons. First, she was embarrassed by the whole thing. She was also humiliated by it. Equally important was the fact that she was the sole support of her family, she had a disabled husband, and a daughter at that point who was still who she was still supporting. And she simply could not afford to lose her job. And as you can understand, even though this company did have a policy prohibiting discrimination, and they had some sort of grievance Mechanism. People and women are reluctant to avail themselves of it because of the concern that if you do, you're going to be retaliated against injustice, discrimination is illegal retaliation is illegal, too. But that doesn't prevent people from doing it. So for the entire three years, she never complained to nobody. The company knew that this was going on. The second problem, and the reason that created a problem in the litigation was when we got to the hearing, and it developed actually had never complained they defended the employer said, Well, why should we believe what she was saying? Certainly, if this were true, wouldn't one expect that she would have complained about this. And the analogy when the situation is very similar to cases of sexual harassment. The second thing that made it equally difficult or more difficult, I should say, is that when my client went to EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to file her complaint of discrimination, even at that she did not tell the investigator about all of these HBase remarks. And she didn't again, because this was a strange she was dealing with, she was still very embarrassed and humiliated about it. And she did not feel comfortable talking about it. Well, that was about six, six months after she was terminated. And so we knew we were also going to be faced with the arguing from the employer that even if she didn't mention it while she was employed, because the possible retaliation, surely there can't be any excuse for not telling the EEOC investigator or intake work. But she did not. Before he tell you how we dealt with this, and as I said, I can't tell you whether we dealt with it successfully but how we dealt with it. Let me tell you a little bit of Equifax. She had had an unblemished record for the first 11 years of her career with this employer. And indeed, even after she was transferred in her 11th year and began working on new this man who made these HBase comments, she still had an unblemished record until the day of her termination.

Unknown Speaker  50:18
She worked in a unit with one other secretary. This woman was in her mid 20s. A client advises that she wore short skirts, she was very attractive. And the man who she worked for who my client work for, was a man who preferred having younger women working for him. And I say this just to give you a sense, it's not meant to to the critical, judgmental or derogatory in any way but my client is, is a woman was when she was terminated. So was not especially attractive. And so the the contrast between her and this younger woman was very, very hard. As I said she was subjected to, not daily but very frequent, age based derogatory comments. About two weeks before she was terminated, this younger woman was out ill and she was out for about 90 days. My client was asked to do much of this younger woman's work as well as she did it, she did it willingly. And she did it and she completed the work. Nine days later, the other woman came back. And my client was still asked to do some of her work, because the younger woman was apparently spending time with one of the people to whom she was responsible, in that person's office just chatting away. For two days, my client continued to do her work as well as work of this young woman. On the third day, to infer termination, she was again asked to do work of this younger woman. This was in the afternoon, and she said no. boss asked her to think about it and said he would get back to her later in the day, the quarterback about two hours later. And again, he asked her if she would do the work. And she said no. And at that point, she was immediately terminated. And, of course, what the employer contended was that she was insubordinate. And I think in one sense, she certainly refused a direct request order for boss. But what had happened was, you had a welling up of discrimination or disparate treatment, the discrimination by the manager for three years. And then that compounded by the fact that she is now being asked to do the work of a younger woman who has returned from her sick leave, presumably is capable of doing her own work. And so she's being asked to do this too. And for my clients statement that she would not do it was, I think, not only a welling up of emotions, but in effect an effort on her part to say, I will not stand for this discrimination. I simply know she didn't say it that point. She just said no. But we believe that's what she was saying. Well, the issue then became how did we deal with proving discrimination? When although she was able to testify as to the various incidents, where the manager ladies HBase Carmen's? She never told anybody, both during the time that she was an employee. And she didn't tell ESPN, she went to file number one, number two. Well, let me depress your log window when in discrimination to prove a case of discrimination.

Unknown Speaker  54:18
At least initially, the burden is on the individual claiming discrimination to establish what we always call a punch patient case. And in baseball Pro, its way I describe that is this gets the batter at least to first base, it doesn't get the batter home plate, but it gets you to first base. If you don't get to first base, then the game's over. And what you have to do is show that you're a member of a class that is protected by the law and somebody is the other speakers mentioned, who's over 40 is protected by the Federal age discrimination statute. To you have to show that you're capable of doing the job and my clients serve was three that notwithstanding that you were terminated. And for that the employer continued to look for someone else. And we selected hired another employee who was under 40. In case of age discrimination of this gender, someone in a different sects of its race, somewhat different race. So we easily met the defining feature. The burden then shifts to the employer, and only employer has to do it's a very easy birdie, the employer doesn't have to prove anything. It just has to articulate that is voice, a legitimate job related reason. And obviously, in this case, the reason that the that the employer gave was insubordination, at least on the surface is clearly two legitimate reasons. So the second problem that we were faced with is how do you overcome this claim that she was supported? Well, as we thought about it, we felt that there was simply no way that that we were going to be able to succeed on the client's testimony. Well, in most discrimination cases, the plaintiffs case consists of the testimony the plaintiff, but here, we felt we needed something more. And what occurred to us after working with the client, was that her inability, if you will, and unwillingness to complain about this discrimination while she was employed, and also to voice it to the EEO EEOC investigator was for reasons that are very similar to the reasons that a woman who is subjected to sexual harassment undergoes when she doesn't complain? Humiliation since self degradation, embarrassment, and concerns about retaliation, then the question was, how are we going to establish that we researched the cases and we didn't find the kind of testimony that you have in sexual harassment cases, in age discrimination cases. We checked the literature. And we didn't find any literature, importing these concerns in the area of sexual harassment into your age discrimination. So we did some searching, and we got a hold of a woman who teaches at the Columbia School of Social Work. She's on the faculty there. And we asked her whether or not this theory applicable sexual harassment whether it was something that was recognized, at least by academics, as something that occurs with older workers, and she said, yes, definitely it did. So we have her testify. I should also mention, she provided some counseling to my point two wings didn't really have counseling. So she testified both as an expert witness, as well as a treating health care professional. It raised some concerns, the employer claimed that she would be overly biased because she was treating the client but the ghost into a serious concern. Our expert testified to a couple of things. One of the reasons that she gave for my client not voicing her objections to the discriminatory conduct, as well as to EEOC was that my client believed that she had been a victim, and that she felt that she really had no recourse in any event. And that is you'll find a typical situation with women in situations of sexual harassment.

Unknown Speaker  59:40
Even companies that have fairly progressive policies that say that first person complaint who's your manager, but if your manager isn't your editor, the discrimination obviously can bypass that person getting the next step up. But often the systems We are supervised by men. And the feeling is that in the case of sexual harassment, or in the case of somebody who's indicative of age discrimination, that you're just not going to be believed. Because particularly if the person that you're complaining about is somebody asked was the case with my clients manager, somebody who held a fairly high level decision, and been with a company a very long time, with at least on the surface, a person who sort of exuded respect so that my client felt that she couldn't complain, but it wasn't going to get her anywhere. Indeed, it would just make life worse. So that was one thing that our expert testified to. Second thing is fear and intimidation. I mentioned retaliation. Well, my client had the fear that if she complained, she was going to be terminated. Or, if not terminated. In so many words, he would make life so difficult for her that she would ultimately reach the conclusion that she had no alternative but to leave. And as I mentioned before, she was the sole support for family, she had to say she was still supporting your daughter, she simply could not lose her job. And indeed, she worked and lived in mortal fear that she was going to lose her job. So fear and intimidation played a role. And lastly, which I mentioned before, it's embarrassment and humiliation. She was certainly reluctant to tell anyone else in the company because this was for her very embarrassing situation. And you might say, Well, how is this embarrassing? I don't quite understanding how this is embarrassing, like an issue of sexual harassment that may involve some very private issues. Well, it's embarrassing and humiliating, because every time you're subjected to it, and then if you have to speak to somebody about it. You're not only repeating all of these things, but the focus is on you as an older worker. And as a worker, doesn't seem to be able to measure up to the job. Because surely, if you could do the job, get put all this stuff aside, you do the job and get on with things. So that's why it was particularly embarrassing and humiliating. Now, interestingly, what happened is, in terms of the hearing, this was a hearing that was not in court. And in fact, it wasn't under the federal age discrimination statute. This was under the New York State Human Rights Law. And the complaint was filed with the New York State Division of Human Rights well with the EEOC, but also use the condition team, right. And the hearing was an administrative hearing before the lawyer judge under the State Human Rights Law. And I might mention, just as an aside, I think it's kind of funny. The New York State Human Rights law as it relates to age discrimination, protects people who are 18 years of age and older. And I don't quite know the New York's human rights law, it is very old. Back in the 40s. I don't know why. Starting to AGT. Those of us who have little older older than 18 have some difficulty wondering why people 1819 has to be protected. In any event. The hearing started and after my client testify, we put the our expert witness on. And the administrative law judge refused to permit her to testify about why she believed my client did not complain to anyone at the company and didn't complete the EEOC. And he was adamant. And the hearing was completed without that portion of her testimony.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:33
We then made a motion to reopen the hearing. And ultimately, that's decided by the commissioner of the state Division of Human Rights, but these things proceed at such a glacial pace that it took about 14 months before we got a decision. We ultimately got a decision that was favorable. And so the hearing was reopened. And I think last November, December, October. And this was we had another half day testimony, which Professor from the School of Social Work came back testimony. My client was terminated in 90 days sets. It took until 1990 to get a finding of probable cause. And then it took another year before the hearing was scheduled. And the way they did hearings at that point was they schedule you for a day. And if that wasn't enough, then at the end of that day, you get another day, but it might be six months later. So the hearing lasted for initially performance, we have four days that we will cure the last two years, till 1992. And then, of course, it wasn't until before 3d That was reopened to take additional testimony. briefs were filed in December, just told us he had a decision in February. Now the end of April, we're still waiting for a decision. And that's not the end of it. Let me just tell you one more sad aspect of this. The way the state division operates, when the judge issues his decision, it's not a final determination. It ultimately has to be approved by the commissioner. And the parties can either file briefs in support or opposition is the city. So that's going to take another several months. Once the commissioner issues her decision, then the losing party can appeal it into court with the state court. And here's the thing that is most outrageous about these things. And generally, because of this, we don't do us in the state division, we try to present most of the cases in federal court. The problem there is it's much more expensive to litigate the case in federal court than it is before the State Division and our clients simply cannot afford the expensive the federal court action and because of all the problems, it wasn't the type of case that we would take so contingency basis. But notwithstanding that it's been nine years since she was fired, what we're going to find if we win, we know this employer will appeal it to court. And there have been some decisions recently by the appellate divisions the intermediate appellate court that has said that we are the cases taken so long. And therefore there would be a tremendous back a obligation and liability on the part of the employer. It's not fair to the employer, and therefore they have limited the damages. Now, maybe it's factor. But as between the employer and the the plan for the complainant, when it's been proven that the employee discriminated against, it doesn't seem to me that there's a really serious question as to who would have their responsibility. Even if it's taken. Care Of course, I have a candidate for secondary responsibility that sustained division human rights, they already kick in some money because it was their agency that causes them to take as long as interestingly there was a lawsuit that was recently filed against the real estate division of human rights and the governor challenging the length of time it takes them to process these cases. Because what happens is what I just described, what happened. And even that's a bit of a digression. The case I think, though demonstrates in stark contrast, or start with allegations sometimes the fight that older workers find, and this was the determination was not not the only problem that we find suffered.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:19
Obviously, she began looking for another job after she was terminated. She could not look immediately because she was so destroyed and so upset that if she went in for an interview, she wouldn't be shown the door when he was over. But after about six or eight months, she began looking for a job in the nine years since she lost her job. She was employed with a nonprofit organization for about a year and a half. But that has been her sole employee at once, and she lost that job because they decided that they wanted someone With the worst skills someone had, who had computer background, my client didn't. She around took a course in computers, but it was just very difficult because of all the emotional problems for her to try to learn to use the computer. So that's the other problem. And of course, if we believe she's got a big pay claim, but that's not healthy. So that's the problem. And we think that the importing what people know and understand and have learned in terms of why women who are subjected to sexual harassment, don't come out and talk about you don't complain about it is equally relevant. In the case of age discrimination. I believe. If we're successful, it'll be it will be the first case I'm aware of, at least in terms of reporting cases, I'm not aware of anyone that tried this approach. It may seem, you know, in reflection, pretty obvious, but I think that's all I need to talk about for you.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:14
We heard different kinds of presentations in different areas, all we lady, floater workers, and certainly all relate to women we've tried to add your case was that it was a woman was great, because when my husband is sympathetic, if it were a male, it's an issue. And more with that, I'd like to open it up to anybody who would like to either discuss one of the areas that each of us talked about, or ask questions or whatever you'd like, as it's your turn,

Unknown Speaker  1:11:41
I'd like to just comment on Absolutely. So I've just been through such a case, when I opted for was to take a settlement, because the person who was terminated prior to myself, and who sued. That had he was dismissed. In November. Ada then took until this past November, five years to settle it. So I made a settlement settlement, which was less than what was originally promised, but it saved the time and the aggravation.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:19
Well, let me just say one thing about that. Not only is the termination, under circumstances of my client, a very emotionally distressful distressing situation, but litigation is to another. And sometimes it is important, and we've worked with our clients and will sometimes encourage them to settle a case and sort of, as they say, get on with your life because you can't let this thing eat away at you. Now, unlike in your situation, however, our adversary never breathed one word of settlement, they felt that they had an unassailable case. And during the entire length of this southern came up, I will mention one other case that I'm just about finishing. For today also representing it's an Equal Pay case. My client is a professor at a community college in the suburbs, teaches English. And although she has the same length of service at the college as her male counterpart, who teaches in the same department, in fact, they teach pretty much the same courses. And indeed, she has a PhD, you know, he has a master's. She has been a full professor for 11 years, he for over three years. Nonetheless, he was being paid eight to $9,000 a year, less than she was given. Now. This is something that she was involved in for close to 20 years. I have a third attorney, she's she's an employee, we've been successful. But when it finally got to me and we we swept away, what are the tangential issues, we decided not to go forward in federal court with a Title Seven sex discrimination claim, only a claim under the ACA is under the Equal Pay. It seemed like a fairly winnable case to me. So again, relating to what you said, to try to lessen the expense and the time and the stress on the client. I wrote to the college initially before we filed suit, and laid out our case and said we'd like to settle if we can and we think you ought to settle because we've got a darn good case. And what's more, if we litigate it and more successful. We have the right which is true under most civil rights laws. To go back into coordinates insurance to require that you, employer, pay my client for legal expenses, so it's going to be more expensive for you. Well, we discussed it a little bit, but we, the settlement that they were prepared to offer was absolutely, totally unacceptable. So we find different attorneys appeared after we file, it's a community college. So we have seen both the county as well as the college. So when attorneys representing the college students, I again broach the subject of settlement. Now, interest whatsoever, we ultimately won on motions to dismiss in motion for summary judgment, so that we didn't we didn't have a trial, and it took about a year, we had to do discovery depositions and that sort of thing. But there is a case, where it seems to me any objective person looking at you can tell you what equal pay involves, but it was fairly obvious violation of the Equal Pay Act, yet thinking anybody. Even an attorney on the other side, just in terms of properly representing his client would have sat down with his clients. And look, this is a case when you're already settling, not necessarily using one. But from a business point of view and doesn't pay to continue to win. They wouldn't have settled that case. So a lot of times you find employers who don't want to settle. And if they don't want to settle, then you have to continue to

Unknown Speaker  1:16:37
be successful in getting

Unknown Speaker  1:16:39
that. Yeah. And interestingly, we got not only you can get back paid for three years. So that's about $25,000. In addition, we were able to establish that they acted willfully and not in good faith. So we're entitled to liquidated damages and some other Emended W and 25,000. So that's now you're talking about 50,000. Then there was another 10,000. That was calculated. The current disparity is about $10,000. My client is about 55. He expects to work till you're 65. So in addition to the 67,000, this is worth another 100,002 on a going forward basis, because she's gonna be equalized with her male counterpart. So yeah, we we got to fully release it. And she's

Unknown Speaker  1:17:31
ready for that.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:33
Any other questions in any other areas we want to work or whatever?

Unknown Speaker  1:17:38
Question that age discrimination is the last refuge of the bigoted that it's an it's an area that perhaps has not been explored as much as sex discrimination, race discrimination, and perhaps it's difficult for that reason to prove it.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:52
Right. Well, what are the other questions? Well, there's plenty of litigation. But I think in terms of the public perception, you don't care as much about age discrimination. When Title Seven, the Federal anti discrimination discrimination statute was enacted in 64. And then certainly in the 70s, a lot of the large class action cases were race discrimination. And in the late 80s, and 90s, particularly as a result of two Supreme Court decisions now, and really, it's a result of the Clarence Thomas hearings. There's more litigation in the area of sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Absolutely. So while there's a lot of litigation, I just don't think it's gotten the public attention that

Unknown Speaker  1:18:52
nobody's fighting. i One of the things ADRP has its we have a legal department. And they have been working very hard at it. The thing that they do is not take individuals cases, but do class action suits. And the one of the most successful and biggest class action suit that was settled was State Farm Insurance Company, who discriminated by hiring younger workers. And it was very blatant. There'd been another attorney recently that they've also included. Xerox was trying to get AARP to fight their cases or act as well. I just replaced for a lot of it. Because when they laid off or downsize, there was this huge disproportionate group of older primarily men, but didn't have that were let go. And they have had a class action suit, which hasn't gone anyplace for about four years already. There also was a case with a group of Kodak people and the reason for that because this is local. So that's fine, actually, in Rochester, New York, that they fell again, we're age discriminated because they've been doing some promising if you took early retirement, you would get so many benefits for so many years. And they were are pretty well told they could either keep their jobs now keep the judge of what the plan would be. And they could either choose to play in or take the chance that they would or wouldn't have their jobs. Well, this particular group was told that they would get so much money, but when the company and this is after they had done some initial downsizing, finally came up with this group's plan, it was not the same as the other people who later were downsized got, they got less money and less numbers of years put into the package for retirement than a later group that was laid off. And the company refused to admit this. So there is more recognition. But it's the old story of whether it's women's issues, pretend which we've learned, like, you've got to throw together because if numbers there is spread, any other issues that people would like to bring up such that, you know,

Unknown Speaker  1:20:49
I'd like to ask a question about financial planning, I have a 91 year old mother does pretty well. And a seven year old son, I went to the same school, as my husband would say, department graduated at the same time. And as everyone said, I'm making two thirds of his income at the same dia prep plan. And again, he

Unknown Speaker  1:21:08
has

Unknown Speaker  1:21:10
more than I do, I guess my question, the thing that wasn't clear in your discussion was being a married person in the situation, what can I do that that doesn't become my husband? And what can I do sort of independently, to protect myself?

Unknown Speaker  1:21:25
Well, it sounds like, you've been fortunate in that you both have the opportunity to put money into your career. So each of those individual, although you are against, he's entitled to half years and year and a half his you can do it. See, you don't have to do all your investing in a format that the IRS considers retirement money. People can buy random real estate property or boat rental business or anything that you manually think of. So you can just plain save money after tax and some mutual funds, be the owner of fat, or videos or with your son or you know, do things in your own name on your own. But I thought but anything that you do, yeah, anything that's employer sponsored. You know, hopefully, things will go well, and you'll each share it but but you are entitled each two hands

Unknown Speaker  1:22:26
has to be your IRAs and your Chios must be individual names, they're not enjoyment. And they belong to you, as long as you don't, each of you if you don't get divorced, if you get a divorce, then you have to fight over and which I am currently doing. But it depends on it doesn't matter whether general name or not, there's a whole other structures of financial eligibility, what is what and, and get approved, you know, it doesn't matter. I mean, how much money we're holding, but it's in your own name. So you will get that money when you need it, it's yours to take out whenever you want, when you're eligible to take it up, there are a variety of things you can put your money into, I mean, I have mine, some of the mutual funds, I have some of the real estate, it's all pre tax, you know what didn't take it out. It's taxable. But I don't have to take it out on seven and a half. So there's that. But the other thing is that on the Social Security, which is important to understand, if in fact, you've been divorced, you're in your husband is retired, and if he dies, if you've been married at least 10 years, you are eligible to his full Social Security. So that that's a lot of women do not understand that before if he's retired, and if he's alive, you are eligible to have his social security. But if he dies, and you have been married at least 10 years, and even though you're divorced, you can collect your own and you could collect his. Yeah, he doesn't. Well, that's a new wrinkle. Now, I think that's a no brainer. I think they're looking at how many social security Yeah, because you can't collect more than one what you can look at is which is the most for you. What you can do is just like when I looked at my Social Security, against my husband's Social Security, and deciding which one to take when I wanted to take Social Security at the early age, then I might happen to admit because I was in a higher paying job. Better on my own than half of his which I was entitled. So

Unknown Speaker  1:24:26
if you've read this, this is me. I get all his social security,

Unknown Speaker  1:24:30
if in fact, it's better than what you want. And if yes, very much. It doesn't matter if Social Security is public. I mean, that's a public entitlement. It is an entitlement is based on earnings, and it's based on earnings, but it doesn't matter. You're still entitled whether or not you worked. You see so it doesn't matter.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:52
without taking anything from him

Unknown Speaker  1:24:55
directly from the government. Nobody. Only thing is very important is to save yourself Security? Oh, yes, I

Unknown Speaker  1:25:03
think it's like the reason why

Unknown Speaker  1:25:06
a married people if one spouse dies, or when you hear about the older women who are suffering is because when the two of them have been married, and even though they're older, they collect one and a half times Social Security, when one person dies, they lose the other half, and therefore their costs and so forth, maybe based upon the income of one and a half times, especially when they only have one time, which is very hard for a lot of people don't quite understand why all these women who now get the full Social Security don't have as much to live on, because they've lost that one and a half, which is the average woman's Social Security is $397 a month, the older woman compared to men, which is like $200, a month more.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:49
I was wondering how organizations I belong to both out and or AARP, I sensitizing the corporate profit of enough profit every year in terms of second careers, with people going into after retirement, or going into second careers, especially since so many people are younger when they retire if they take

Unknown Speaker  1:26:15
responsibility as it that's why I talked about career self management, we expect somebody else to do it for so we nobody else's.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:22
There are a lot of there are a lot of internal barriers, because the reality is that I'm a career counsellor. And I can not have people. I'm also a retiree who's in second career. But they're here, this woman was having such difficulty, besides the stress of getting into a position and she's confident in her skills, except for the supposedly technology skills. But I don't believe it's that easy. In especially in the economy, we have today, the people who say, Oh, here's a 55 year old woman who wants to come in?

Unknown Speaker  1:27:02
Oh, no, it's either, right that. The point is, it's very difficult when you talk about second career. So I had second, third and fourth ones while I was younger, because that's going to be more common, people are going to move around at a more frequent pace, which is why when I was working, the best thing was 10 years. I never got that, and I never worked anyplace down here. Now it's five years. I mean, that at least has been an improvement, which is why that was done. You're there's no you're right. I mean, anybody over 50 trying to start off brand new in a different kind of career with different skills new pending upon what the skills are, where they're going. That's why so many women in particular are going into their own jobs, or their own businesses rather, because they feel they can start a business if they identify a need. And that they can, nobody can fire them. I mean, unless they lose money, and they can't afford to one of the women I was sitting next to what lunches done that she she was saying she's 40 or something. And she had fallen into her she had worked for other people. And she had gone into her own business, which was doing design worked for industry, as well as for private people sort of like decorating or office work or whatever. And she I said, Are you supporting yourself? Well, I'm supporting myself, but I haven't really made a lot of money yet. But the hope is there and she's her own boss. And she knows as she stays in the field, she will learn what skills she needs to gain an order to move upward.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:21
And the yield that all three of you touched very much on what's happened to me i because I'm in the academic world. And I was told to go get my PhD. And I did that. And now I'm faced with the fact that everybody's saying to me, Well, you're too old, and you're never going to get hired, because why would they hire you when a man takes early retirement at 55? Look at you, you know. And so I'm really in not only that, but by doing exactly what I was told to do, which was to go get my doctorate. I lost my seniority and my bargaining unit status because the adjuncts unionized. And there was a clause that said, if you were gone for more than 36 months, and I was gone six months longer, I lost it all. So I'm doing exactly what you said, I've got about three or four projects going all the time trying to figure out how I can. And because I come from Rutland, Vermont and not in a metropolitan area, my teaching opportunities, it's constant bargaining was kind of teach this course community shift course. But tonight, my worry is that what I want to do is get back into your craft. See, I was in that for one year terminal appointment, I got into that retirement system. They told me they told me for five years while I was in graduate school, and I keep thinking, I'm gonna get a phone call and they're gonna say, you know, you're out of here as to how to get back into that retirement system on a consistent basis.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:41
We work in an organization that that

Unknown Speaker  1:29:44
and there are many openings at this point at the college where I was there maybe next year and then I'll go through the age thing again about Well, why would we hire you when there's a 30 year old, you know, here, but the email is

Unknown Speaker  1:29:58
the it depends what your skin also you would have certain knowledge base that perhaps this person doesn't have you have certain experience, you bring something else you have to know I own this other young woman at lunch is the biggest thing that young people she was saying she's young, she's she graduated here last year. And that have to know is admission to skills and be able to market yourself.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:19
What I think is said and I don't think I'm unique is I see a number of women in my situation, who took that 10 or 11 years out who went back to work part time while our kids were growing up, who now want to pursue professional career and feel I mean, I'm healthy, I had lots of energy feel very much that I want to continue to work i 70. And who knows? I don't know, I just know I don't, I'm not ready to quit. But you're also in

Unknown Speaker  1:30:44
a downsizing exactly what I read except for community colleges, you should look and

Unknown Speaker  1:30:50
I have, and I'm waiting for the phone call 250 applications for I just acquired.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:59
What I'd like to know is a very of my organizations that I pay my dues to sensitizing the academic world, the nonprofit, the corporate world to the value of oh,

Unknown Speaker  1:31:13
I'm with you on that. Yeah, we're doing a lot of education training publications. I know I get working. Yeah, I mean, all of these things, go to business industry, and we're working with the Conference Board now. They industry has put up 50% of the class and AARP 50% do a first a nationwide survey of human resource people. The strengths of older workers, what this will do, I don't know. But they there has never been done to that extent, because there are strengths there are assets that workers bring. And they did the study will begin next year. So that after the publication of that, you know, we don't know. But

Unknown Speaker  1:31:49
I'm kind of concerned that you said something like older workers ended six, five.

Unknown Speaker  1:31:57
And that's the traditional age that Social Security picked. And that in fact, the majority of men do retire at 65.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:06
Yeah, but if you're, if you're, well, I'm in a very similar situation, like, I'm pretty much underemployed, doing consulting, and I'm an attorney, actually. But I don't do that I work in the aging field, and I want to get a job. For various reasons, I want a full time job. And I in a very competent person, I am having one. I don't live in this area. I live in Washington, I am having one hell of a time. And it doesn't really help me to hear what you're saying about well, you have to do such and such a rerun of downsizing in his family. What does that mean if you're on the outside, and I also have a situation where because I'm self employed, and all of my pension comes from if, you know, whatever I put into an IRA or SEP in a given year and some months are better than others trying to get into set you're all kinds of places, believe me I'm

Unknown Speaker  1:32:58
very, very, very agile and field that's fantastic for women with legal background and stuff like that. I've met a couple of women attorneys who didn't want to be attorneys. And

Unknown Speaker  1:33:08
it's not people, people do not get paid to do mediation. I have investigated. People love to get trained to be mediators, and they train a lot of people to be mediators, and then they can't, and then there's no work for them. I know that because I know mediators and I talk to them about it. And

Unknown Speaker  1:33:24
part of the country is not working and how acceptable mediations. But anyway, there are some work. It's the old story network. It's the old story of being with somebody who says, Hey, we need somebody. I mean, we just have a new president of the Regional Council on Aging. She's looking for special people to do develop service programs in the aging area. So it just depends on your network of people and where to live. I mean, geography plays a big part. But you can't stop networking

Unknown Speaker  1:33:51
as a whole. But I mean, I'm and I have to tell you, you know that I guess we probably both are excellent networkers. We're highly intelligent people we know. I mean, and and