Another twist on age discrimination: early retirement “incentives”

In 2006, the Stillwater, Minnesota school district was forced to pay over $1 million to former employees who had been discriminated against in early retirement. Apparently, the school district was reducing early retirement incentive payments for each year as employees grew older. Huh? (I had to read that a couple of times before I could really believe that statement.) Read the story from the EEOC Press.

Not only do older workers not get hired( as Jim and I talked about in previous posts), they get discriminated against in retirement benefits. I’ve also heard of workers being harassed by employers so they quit before getting their pensions, and workers who were laid off just before they were eligible for full pension benefits. Some of this stuff is blatant; other stuff is more subtle.

AARP has some good resources to check out if you think you’ve been discriminated against.  Has this happened to you?  What did you do?