Challenging the 65 Barrier

"Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism." That is a favorite aphorism of Congressman Claude Pepper, the fiery Floridian who, at 76, is as oratorically opulent as he was four decades ago as a radical New Deal Senator. Democrat Pepper's latest crusade, gingered up by senior citizens' groups like the Gray Panthers, is aimed at halting what he views as discrimination because of age. His argument, delivered in his trademark soapbox-preacher style: "Mandatory retirement arbitrarily severs productive persons from their livelihood, squanders their talent, scars their health, strains an already overburdened Social Security system and drives many elderly persons into poverty and despair."

Pepper claims to speak for the 23 million Americans--almost 11% of the population--who are 65 and over. He complains that, oddly enough, these citizens were left exposed to unfair treatment by some past reform legislation: the 1967 law that forbade discrimination in the hiring and firing of people under 65 in private industry because of age, thus penalizing people over 65. Pepper has pushed through the House Education and Labor Committee a bill that would bar forced retirement in the private sector until age 70 and eliminate the mandatory retirement at that age that now applies to all federal employees. A Senate subcommittee headed by New Jersey Democrat Harrison A. Williams is writing similar legislation. President Carter says he supports the retire-ment-at-70 cause in principle, and the enactment of some form of the Pepper bill this year seems almost certain.

Such an extension of the standard U.S. working life would not be universally applauded. Although AFL-CIO Boss George Meany, now 82, is hardly a per suasive personal advocate of early retirement, Big Labor has quietly opposed the Pepper bill. The bill could also create a policy problem for liberals like Senator Hubert Humphrey who have long called for achievement of full employment through a planned economy--a goal that would become all the more difficult and costly if a lot of elderly job seekers were to enter or stay in the labor force. At present, some 2.8 million men and women age 65 and over are counted in the work force; under the Pepper proposal, the lowest estimate is that another 400,000 elderly persons would choose to remain on the job. Many middle-aged workers would thus be denied advancement, while a lot of teen-agers--whose unemployment rate is nearing 20%--would be deprived of any job opportunities.

Bright Talents. Proponents of the Pepper bill argue that its impact on younger workers will be modest, partly because generous pension plans, early retirement programs and other inducements have been drawing people out of the work force at ever earlier ages. For instance, at GM, where an assembly-line worker can retire after 30 years' service, irrespective of age, only 2% of the company's 748,000 employees actually stay on the payroll until 65.

At the same time, Pepper-plan advocates make some telling economic and social arguments for later retirement. A retired couple, both 65, who live solely on Social Security payments, must scrape by on a bare-bones average income of $400 a month, or $4,800 a year. Some 3.3 million elderly people exist on incomes that are below the individual poverty level of $2,730 a year. By allowing these people to work, the pro-Pepper argument goes, some of the pressure on the strapped Social Security system would be relieved.

Moreover, the gerontocratic lobby likes to point to such distinguished individuals as Conductor Arthur Fiedler (82), Comedian George Burns (81), Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover (77) and Anthropologist Margaret Mead (75) as examples of people whose bright talents are burnished with age. As might be expected, Margaret Mead has advanced an intriguing theory about life expectancy in the U.S. "One reason women live longer than men," she says, "is that they can continue to do something they are used to doing, whereas men are abruptly cut off, whether they are admirals or shopkeepers."

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