Now, the Revolt of the Old

It might as well have been a vote for motherhood or apple pie or sunshine.

There were no opposing speeches, dissent was muttered only in the safety of the cloakroom, and the final floor vote was a whopping 359 to 4. Yet the bill that breezed through the U.S. House of Representatives may be the session's most important piece of legislation, with ramifications no one can foresee. It extends the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 in private industry and removes it altogether for federal employees. Said the bill's sponsor, Florida Democrat Claude Pepper, 77: "At long last, we will have eliminated ageism as we have previously eliminated sexism and racism as a basis for discrimination in this country, and we will be putting a new emphasis on human rights."

A potent combination of sentiment, shrewdness and pure political muscle whisked the bill through the House, and it seems destined to pass the Senate as well, either at the end of this session or early next year. Indeed, Senator Jacob Javits, 73, is preparing an amendment that would completely phase out mandatory retirement over a five-year period. This abrupt, stunning legislative success is the hallmark of another revolt in America, this time by the aged. The 1960s was the decade of aroused youth; the 1970s may well belong to their grandparents. Some 23 million Americans, about 10% of the population, are 65 or over. Numbers alone give them political clout, because they vote more consistently than younger groups. In addition, they have begun to organize with all the skill and determination of other embattled minorities. Such burgeoning pressure groups as the Gray Panthers, the National Council on the Aging, the National Association of Retired Federal Employees and the National Council of Senior Citizens have given their political representatives little respite. Foremost among their goals has been the fight for the right to work.

The Protestant work ethic is alive and more than well among older Americans. Study after study has shown what many oldsters feel in their bones: without employment, their lives go blank. They become listless and preoccupied with their frailties, real or imagined. There is a disproportionate death rate among those forced to retire, and 25% of all known suicides are committed by people over 65. Beyond that, years of substantial inflation have eroded their pensions and kept many of them from enjoying the often illusory, but highly touted leisure pursuits of their allegedly golden years. Says Joseph Schwartz, who retired after 27 years as a Chicago schoolteacher, then retired once again as a park supervisor and is looking for a job now: "Above all, you must work.

You have to be active mentally as well as physically. If you're not, what good is living?"

Until recently in America, old people did not have much trouble living up to that philosophy. Work and age had not been severed. In colonial times, elderly people were fewer, but they held the best jobs. Nor did they budge from their posts until death or ill health forced them out. In 17th century New England, 90% of the ministers and magistrates died in office. People showed their respect for age--and power --by attempting to look older than they were. They powdered their hair and wore the severely cut clothing of the aged.

Gradually, this esteem for the ancients was undermined by notions of liberty and equality that in part stemmed from the French Revolution. The prerogatives of age were swept away. At the end of the 18th century, the first American mandatory retirement laws were enacted in New York State.

The financial disabilities of old age were first recognized as a serious social problem by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who initiated the social security pension system in 1884. He arbitrarily set the age for receiving benefits at 65, and his model has been followed ever since in much of the Western world. The same age for receiving benefits--and therefore being a candidate for forced retirement--was enshrined in the U.S. Social Security system when it was established in 1935, and was copied in almost all the private pension plans that mushroomed after World War II. Yet in Bismarck's time, only a small percentage of the population lived to 65; life expectancy at birth was about 37 years. Today's advances in health and medicine have produced a virtual army of robust, over-65 unemployed. Future medical breakthroughs will swell these ranks even more.

Sooner or later, the work demands of the aged would have to be heard--and in the U.S. it appears to be sooner.

Modification or elimination of mandatory retirement is an idea that has arrived with a rush, catching almost everybody off guard. Concedes a U.S. Labor Department official: "The prospect of more old folks working hit us this month like a bolt from the blue, and quite honestly, we don't know how this is going to affect problems like chronic youth unemployment, sex discrimination and shifting consumer patterns. Nobody knows."

Warns Brookings Institution Economist John Palmer: "It's incredible that Congress would be moving so fast to replace one retirement system with a new one it knows so little about."

Reactions vary from complacent to fearful. "The legislation just won't have a major impact on this country," says James Schulz of Brandeis University's School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare. "After all, the main questions involved are those of equity and rights, not economics." Schulz estimates that less than 10% of Americans approaching 65 are affected by mandatory retirement. "When you get down to hard numbers," he says, "we're talking about thousands of people, not millions." The Senate Committee on Human Resources believes that 200,000 people, or two-tenths of 1 % of the labor force, would choose to work beyond 65. But a 1974 Louis Harris survey indicates that one-third of those aged 65 to 69 would go to work at least part-time if they were given the opportunity. That would add up to a shocking 2.8 million people, which would raise the current 7% unemployment rate to roughly 10%, since the over-65 worker would theoretically be taking a job from somebody.

The fact that the Pepper bill was passed so overwhelmingly by the House does not mean it has a similar percentage of support off Capitol Hill. Debates about it are just beginning to build, and views are sharply divided. Opponents and proponents have marshaled contradictory sets of ideas and statistics to support radically different points of view.

Those who believe that the impact of the new legislation will be limited are encouraged by the continuing trend toward early retirement. It is a paradox that while some older people are battling for the right to work, others are stopping work as soon as they can. At General Motors, the average retirement age is 58, even though the mandatory retirement age is 68 for blue-collar hourly workers, 65 for white-collar salaried employees. Only 11% of GM's salaried workers stay on the job long enough to reach mandatory retirement, and a mere 2% of the blue-collar workers. The experience of some other large companies is similar. Only 20% of Exxon's employees wait until 65 to retire, and only 33% at General Foods Corp.

However, these statistics do not reflect the number of retired people who re-entered the labor force by getting new jobs from which they may not want to be dislodged at 65. Nor do they show how many retire early in time to get a second job because they know that option will not be open to them if they wait too long. If the forced retirement date were postponed to 70 or completely removed, they might behave differently.

Much depends on the type of job.

A blue-collar worker who has labored for 30 years at a grimy, bone-wearying task on an assembly line may welcome retirement with the enthusiasm of a sweepstakes winner. Says Nelson Cruikshank, chairman of the Federal Council on Aging: "If you talk to the black laundry worker about the 'privilege' of continuing to work after 65, she'll spit in your eye. The auto workers' slogan epitomizes this: '30 and out.' " But people in more sedentary or fulfilling occupations, including most levels of management, may be inclined to linger. The U.S. Foreign Service offers an example. Last June a U.S. district court struck down mandatory retirement at 60 for those in the service as unconstitutional. While the decision is being appealed to the Supreme Court, 40% of the people scheduled for retirement have chosen to keep working.

What concerns economists the most is that if too many oldsters decide to stay on the job, the effect on the youth labor market will be severe. The 17.5% unemployment rate for U.S. youth is already a grave concern. "Some people make real sacrifices to get an education and then find there are no jobs," says Robert Geraughty, 58, who retired this year from Southwestern Bell. "Talk about rights, what about the rights of the young?"

Belatedly, the Pepper bill, which would go into effect six months after it became law, is arousing serious alarm among businessmen. A survey released this summer by William M. Mercer Inc., a New York consulting firm on employee benefits, shows that 65% of the 400 business executives polled favor mandatory retirement at 65. Says George Skoglund, executive vice president for personnel at Bank of America: "The underlying problem is that these laws constitute more and more regulation, more of Government looking on and telling us how to manage. It is another one of those things that cause us to lose options." An analysis made by Sears, Roebuck indicates that if one-third of its 433,000 employees continue to work after 65, some 20,000 job changes will be prevented over a five-year period, and its hiring rate will be reduced by 7%.

The new law is expected to clog the channels of promotion; tired old blood will not get a proper infusion of fresh corpuscles. "Each year," says Skoglund, "we hire about 150 hard-charging, fire-eating M.B.A.s who want to become president of the company the next year. What will they do if senior people decide to stay on?" Adds Thomas Egliht, manager of personnel relations at Shell Oil Co. in Houston: "If you put your finger on the key concern today, it is turnover at senior levels. We find value in bringing in new perspectives, ideas and points of view with younger people in top jobs earlier. If the new law affects this, we'll lose something of importance."

It is not only a question of bringing new people in but of getting deadwood out.

Mandatory retirement has spared businesses some difficult decision making.

No matter how good or bad a worker may be, at a certain age he goes, and that's the end of it. But now even the most paternalistic company may feel compelled to rate much more sternly the performance of older employees. Such performance evaluations are subjective at best and open to rebuttal. Says Madeleine Hemmings, director of employee benefits for the National Association of Manufacturers: "That's going to make for a very uncomfortable workplace. We'll have to keep records and document the mistakes people make. We'll have to do that to protect ourselves." This may not be such a draconian change, however, since many companies keep such records as a matter of course. Corporations envision innumerable lawsuits being brought by older people who are fired for cause. Executives might be put in the position of having to go to court to belittle an employee who had served the company competently and faithfully for many years.

If compulsory retirement is a traumatic experience for a worker, perhaps no less trying would be a situation in which he is downgraded at the office for a decade or more. Many companies already exert subtle and not so subtle pressure on older people to get them to retire. Says Detroit Attorney V. Paul Donnelly, who specializes in age-discrimination cases involving white-collar workers: "If they are going to do you in by age 53 and make you worthless, increasing the retirement age is not the answer. I believe it means nothing."

Much of the U.S. pension system, hammered out over years of onerous labor negotiations, will have to be reviewed. This is the reason, initially at least, the AFL-CIO opposed changing the retirement age. The unions have fattened pensions and won other concessions by trading off such payments against a mandatory retirement age. Now, if people work past 65, actual pension costs will decrease. But salary costs will rise, since older workers are generally the highest paid. More will have to be budgeted for health insurance. John Bragg, president of the Life Insurance Co. of Georgia, speculates that a full pension might well be denied workers until they reached 70. Anyone who wanted to retire before that age would have to leave with less.

Educators are as worried about the Pepper bill as businessmen. The prospect at the university level is that a comfortably tenured faculty, whose work is not subject to any kind of review, will stay on forever, regardless of competence. This change could not come at a worse time, since the number of teaching jobs is shrinking. Says Robben W. Fleming, president of the University of Michigan: "We're creating a missing generation that doesn't have a chance in the academic world. The department heads say they are not going to have many openings for the next ten years. That's disastrous. They need stimulating young people to challenge them."

Universities also complain that the Pepper bill would hamper their efforts to comply with affirmative-action programs for hiring women and minorities. Says Dartmouth President John G. Kemeny: "It seems patently unfair to give one desirable social goal precedence over another program of immense social importance." Sudden intense lobbying by educators may pay off. The Senate Human Resources Committee approved an amendment late last week that would keep the mandatory retirement age at 65 for tenured college professors and public school teachers.

Most of the world would find America's revolt of the aged hard to understand. Abroad, 65 remains the most common retirement age, and people are still fighting the battle to leave the job earlier with fatter pensions. There are exceptions. In Japan, where age is revered, employers are being pressured to raise the mandatory retirement age in the private sector from 55 to 60. In the Soviet Union, oldsters are encouraged to stay on the job because there is an acute labor shortage. But in most countries, unemployment is a significant problem and older workers are being pushed to retire to make room for younger people. India is considering lowering its mandatory retirement age from 58 to 55. In Kenya, where not one person out of 14 has a job, youngsters are demanding that the compulsory retirement age be dropped to 50 or 45. Retirement, however, is more pleasant in Kenya than it used to be. Says a clerk who is being pensioned off at 70 by a Nairobi law firm: "I can live in peace and comfort until I die. Less than a century ago, it was the custom of my people to carry old, sick men from their huts into the bush to be eaten alive by hyenas."

Many Americans are optimistic about what more older workers would bring to the economy, business and academic life. They are confident that the aged can be absorbed into the work force without undue strain. California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation in September outlawing mandatory retirement in both the state government and the private sector. California thus became the 14th state to pass laws limiting compulsory retirement on grounds of age. Says Brown: "The more human talent that is used and the more people's minds and bodies contribute to the society, the more work is created. People should not be viewed as liabilities and jobs as finite quantities." Indeed, some economists believe that the oldsters will be needed in the U.S. work force. Demographic studies show that the number of youths starting work is going to decrease in the next few years to the point that there will be a labor shortage in blue-collar occupations by the mid-1980s. By 1985, the 16-to-24 age group will decline to 15% of the total population and constitute 21.9% of the labor force. Those who are 65 or over will account for 11.7% of the population, but if the mandatory retirement age is not raised, they will make up a mere 2.7% of the work force (see chart). Obviously, there will be a large pool of elderly people to draw upon.

The oldtimers can also reduce the "piggyback problem": too few productive workers supporting too many nonproductive people. By staying at work, the older people would provide some relief for the overburdened, near-bankrupt Social Security system. Otherwise, that tax load could become intolerable. At present there are 30 Social Security beneficiaries for every 100 workers; early in the next century it is expected that there will be 52 recipients for every 100 workers. But Social Security officials caution against expecting more than a "minor" impact on the system from having the old work longer.

There are examples of companies that do not have mandatory retirement and are having no problems with that policy. Some even make a special effort to hire people over 65. John D. MacArthur, 80, chairman of the board of Bankers Life and Casualty Co. in Chicago, eliminated mandatory retirement for his company when he was still in his 40s. He has no regrets. About 4% of his 12,000 employees are 65 or over, and the company says they perform just as well as, if not better than, their juniors. "The forgetfulness of a younger person is called absent-mindedness," says Gerald L. Maguire, director of corporate services for Bankers Life. "But when a person 70 years old forgets, it is called senility. However, we are tough about requiring a good day's work. We don't think the senior citizens want to be crutched in any special way."

Tektronix Inc., an electronics firm in Oregon and the state's largest private employer, allows all its 15,900 workers to pick their own date of retirement, provided they are doing a satisfactory job. "We don't make generalized assumptions about age and its effect on productivity," says Susan Stone, director of communications. "We try to focus on the employee and his manager rather than set hard and fast rules. It's a pay-for-performance situation. We have people over 65 doing a heck of a job, no matter where we put them." Texas Refinery, a petroleum-products manufacturer in Fort Worth, prefers to hire older people. Says Bob Phillips, assistant personnel director: "We couldn't operate as efficiently without our over-65-year-olds. The mature salesman has the patience to stay with a customer until he's sold." That is borne out by studies conducted by the National Council on Aging. Says its director of preretirement planning, Edmund W. Fitzpatrick: "Every indication we have to date shows that workers over 65 have less absenteeism and suffer fewer accidents than those, say, in the 30-to-40 age group."

Oldsters have proved capable not only of routine work but of quite demanding tasks as well. International Executive Service Corps was started in 1964 to give retired executives employment as business advisers in developing countries, where the living is not usually easy. In these prickly circumstances, the outcast executives have thrived. They have served on 5,000 projects in 62 different countries. "Age is no factor," says Saul Eisenberg, volunteer recruiter. One man went to Zaire to advise on marketing procedures when he was 82. So far only one executive has had to come home because of a physical disability. "Older people can take the rigors that anybody can," says Eisenberg.

Joan Allen, coordinator of training and education for the Davis Institute for the Care and Study of the Aging in Denver, believes that old age can be a state of mind. "Persons begin to perceive themselves as not as healthy as before, and the self-fulfilling prophecy is very real." Charles Whipple, 63, ombudsman at the Boston Globe, feels that mandatory retirement creates employees in its own image. "I've seen a number of employees who, if it weren't for approaching retirement, would continue to be loyal and efficient workers. Because of it, they have lapsed into premature senility. They walk around like zombies just waiting for the day they retire." Younger people behave differently toward the man soon to retire, thinks

Whipple. "They no longer respect him, and sadly, he does not respect himself."

On the job as well as in the family, many experts think that older people are needed to balance youth and occasionally to act as a corrective force. Says Molly Freeman, a San Francisco sociologist who is doing research on aging: "By segregating old people and branding them useless, we deprive the young and middle-aged of role models. They do not witness the lives of older people who are active, useful and needed. Instead, they see empty, wasted lives and come to believe this is how things inevitably end."

In her 22 years as director of the U.S. Passport Office, Frances Knight, 72, who retired last summer, complains that she has witnessed all too many "enthusiastic and inexperienced Government officials initiating programs that have proved to be ineffective and even disastrous. To discard the type of practical experience and the intimate knowledge which calls a halt to making repeated errors in judgment is foolishness. Our Government is unconsciously wasteful in its discarding of past experience, of its own history."

Like it or not, American institutions are going to have to come to terms with the aged, and there are ways of coping that involve intergenerational compromise. Robert N. Butler, director of the National Institute on Aging and author of a highly regarded book on aging, Why Survive?, sees a "real possibility of replacing mandatory retirement with flexible, functional retirement." The growing diversity of work schedules provides an opportunity for making use of older employees, especially on a part-time basis. One example:

stores are staying open longer on weekdays and weekends, and they need help. Automotive companies, as well as many other industries, complain about mounting absenteeism. Older people could work on Mondays and Fridays, when so many other employees fail to show up.

Throughout the educational system, teachers over 65 might be allowed to stay on the job with half pay and some pension. With the money that is saved, a younger man could be hired to share the duties.

In the executive suite, turnover in top jobs could be assured by putting strict time limits on the positions. At the end of his tenure, the executive leaves the job but not the company. If his new post is not so rewarding as the old one, it is still--in the opinion of the experts--far better than no job at all.

A greater variety of second careers could be made available to those who leave a job. California Senator S.I. Hayakawa, 71, who favors mandatory retirement (he retired from San Francisco State College in 1973) sees politics as a good new career for the aged. By then ambition, at least of an opportunistic sort, is spent, he says. "When you are 65, you have proven yourself already or you have not. It does not matter any more. We are no longer on the make." For Hayakawa, politics is much like scuba diving, which he has just taken up. "It is scary, but extremely exhilarating," he says. "If you have ceased to be ready to face the frightening, then you become old. We weren't put on earth to behave like barnacles."

Ellsworth Bunker, 83, who also supports mandatory retirement, retired as director of the National Sugar Refining Co. at 56, and since then he has devoted himself to public service as an ambassador to various trouble spots, including Viet Nam.

He has now successfully negotiated --along with Sol Linowitz--a new Panama Canal treaty. Explains Bunker: "I don't think there is any age limitation on a person's usefulness. It depends entirely on the individual." At 71, Averell Harriman negotiated the atomic test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union. At 85, he continues to offer sage counsel to the less experienced Carter Administration.

America is renowned as a society of leisure pursuits with the time to indulge in them. But if there is anything old people have learned--often to their sorrow --leisure is not enough. "Work is life" is an equation that was defined by philosophers and intuited by all human beings long before the work ethic was invented.

"Idleness is the death of a living man," said the 17th century British prelate Jeremy Taylor. Work is an anodyne for the inevitability of death, says contemporary Sociologist Daniel Bell. For Sigmund Freud, work was a means of binding an individual to reality and his community.

Governor Brown reports that while institutions in his state generally favored keeping compulsory retirement, individuals opposed it. One company sent literature that urged him to veto the legislation eliminating mandatory retirement; attached to the pamphlets was a note from the company's lobbyist saying that he personally supported the measure.

There is much to be said for the positions of both individuals and institutions, and even more to be said for their finding common ground.

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