Do you think older, long term employees of a company should retire to make room for younger workers?

An interesting question that casts serious doubt on the expectations of a group of workers like ballerinas whose skills while necessary for that one job are not transferable. Skilled but how valuable are they, really, esp in view of the legions who are ready, willing and able to replace them at a much lower cost? Would new younger workers replace older auto workers easily w/o much training and/or expense? What's fair just doesn't enter into the thing esp at a time of economic stress. After all is said and done, no one least of all workers are in business for the good of our health and none of us is irreplacable - at least in the work context. We work to earn money. Period. Neither employer nor customer gives a crap whether we like our work nor should they. I can't help feeling, personally, that car workers have been wildly overpaid for their skill set, an observation that seems to me esp justified by their failure (a) to have seen the writing on the wall and (b) having seen it acted in a way to learn and develop new, more marketable skills. I'm hard-pressed to think of even one of these people who set aside some of that rather spectacularly high pay to further her own education maybe to take what s/he knew about the job to a higher level, even becoming an entrepreneur. Complacency and an overweight sense of entitlement is what happens when labor is overvalued. The smart thing for workers to do in the circs you describe is to see if they can come together and reduce their expectations in line with company profits and with the goal of employing the max no. of workers.

In this day and age it appears all companies (not just Ford) consider their employees disposable...regardless of age. I do find offering long term employees an early retirement package seems to be the trend these days. I think it is unfair that simply because a person reaches a certain age or has been with a company a long time they are booted out to make room for new, younger employees. There just doesn't seem to be loyalty from employers anymore so is it any wonder employees no longer feel loyal to their employers as well? You can be doing a great job, have been with the company for years and walk in one day to find out you no longer have a job.

No they are only concerned with the money and not about loyalty or experience. It may very well be their loss in the end. If they feel so strongly that older workers should retire perhaps they should entice them with a large bonus for doing so, that may sweeten the offer and aid in starting a business for someone who is not ready for real retirement.

What they did at the job I retired from to get rid of older workers was to ignore the annual evaluations for job performance and give the new hires big raises and the older workers within a few years of retirement a small percentage of what the new hires received. It sure didn't create job loyalty because 99% of those who got the nice raises quit within a couple years. They are in constant spiral of hiring-training-employees quitting-mistakes being made by new employees-supervisors quitting and being frustrated. I think management thrives on creating chaos and being rewarded with fat bonuses.

Early retirement offers are a trend in this economy. It's an easy way for organizations to manage layoffs. If you retire early, it's "your" choice to leave the company.

I don't think fairness comes into play here despite the language used to describe early retirement. Do you owe younger workers "your" job? Do you owe the company or your union that kind of loyalty?

Unions have mostly outlived their usefulness anyway.

I guess neither the company nor the young population has figured out that if they "get rid" of older workers in that manner, they're going to have to support us in some other manner. And since we are the majority population now, the company is setting themselves up for age discrimination lawsuits. I know my firm has been slowly "laying off" staffers who are only 1 or 2 years from retirement but since they have laid off other workers as well, no one can claim it's based on age.

This makes room for union dues from an additional 300 checks. Unions do not care about the worker, just the dues they receive. After all, they would likely be hiring these people at lower wage scale. Therefore it is less about age and more about how many workers they collect from.

No Tom, that is not fair..we should work until we can retire to get SS..my state even offer the state employees to retire early with a bonus packages, some took it and some didn't, some says they just want to get rid of some employees and other says the same thing as you did..It should be up to the person if they want to retire or not!!..=)

The company should offer incentive bonuses to encourage the early retirement of an older, more experience person to step aside for the younger, less experienced. If it's not willing to do that then I suspect a lack of integrity.

Unfortunately Tom, I have a feeling its going to become the "wave of the future," some companies feel they need to have to do that to survive. I am told that companies have to pay higher insurance rates for employees over 60, and those rates are increasing again, I don't know that much about this, so I can;t comment any further.

No they should not be required to retire unless they can not do the job they been hired to do. Unions are good until they get too much power then they usually become destructive. And this from an ex union member.