Senator CLARK. I am not sure they decided they did not need it, but they did not want it and would not pay for it.

Senator MCNAMARA. I am sure there is no county that does not need it.

NEED FOR PUBLICIZING RESEARCH FINDINGS

We hope you gentlemen are not going to quit us at this point, valuable as your contributions have been. We think that out of these hearings we ought to develop a set of practical guides that we can distribute widely if we can get enough money in the Senate to do it; or maybe with the help of the Federal Public Health Service-although I know that its budget is pretty limited-we can distribute the information that has been developed here, and that is available in our Government institutions.

We have undertaken a lot of research governmentally but do not have enough machinery for getting this knowledge out to the people. I have discussed this matter with Dr. Daitz on several occasions. I know that there is a great need in that area.

We ought to ask you panelists to join with our staff in preparing a list of perhaps 10 or 15 practical suggestions for good nutrition and healthy living. This practical list of suggestions could be printed up and made available to the general public by our Public Health Service and through the subcommittee.

We are going to ask you to cooperate with our staff in formulating these suggestions.

Unless there are other questions, I think we have about reached the conclusion of our first public hearing in this series.

Thank you again for your cooperation.

I can assure you that your testimony is appreciated, and will be very helpful to the U.S. Senate.

Thanks again.

This hearing is recessed until 9:30 tomorrow morning.

(Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, June 17, 1959.)

THE AGED AND THE AGING IN THE UNITED STATES (Sec. II.-Employment Problems of the Older Worker)

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1959

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PROBLEMS OF THE AGED AND AGING

OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washingon, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Senator Pat McNamara (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators McNamara (presiding), Clark, and Randolph. Subcommittee staff members present: Sidney Spector, staff director, and Dr. Harold Sheppard, research director.

Committee staff members present: Stewart E. McClure, chief clerk; Raymond D. Hurley, minority professional staff member.

Senator MCNAMARA. The hearing will be in order.

We are meeting today to discuss the general topic of employment as it bears on the particular interest of this subcommittee the problems of the aging and the aged.

I cannot direct our attention immediately to the specific problem of the employment of older men and women without emphasizing first, and above all, that in the immediate present-here and now, today-this problem cannot be separated from the more basic issue of general employment for the total country.

Certainly, much of what we will hear and discuss today could be minimized if we were carrying out an effective national policy of full employment for everybody who wanted a job.

But we are not acting that intelligently, despite the fact that we have a 1946 Full Employment Act, which is supposed to be utilized by the President. Instead, we are still in the midst of an unemployment dilemma-I know we are gaining a little in the employment figures and a large part of the cost of unemployment, especially the human cost, is still being paid by people over the age of 45, and certainly those men and women over 55 years of age.

I am referring, for example, to the fact that during the 1957-58 recession, the percentage of older unemployed who were without jobs for more than 6 months was more that twice the percentage of workers under the age of 30. In other words, the older the person, the longer he was unemployed.

Today, we are going to hear from experts who have dealt with the problem of the employment of middle-aged and older workers. We want to hear from them their description of what is taking place in the country with regard to the problem, and their recommendation on specific matters that can help guide us in the determination of the

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role that the Federal Government can play in facing up to the challenges of an aging payroll in rapidly changing economy.

After listening to a brief report from each of them, we hope that they will feel free to question each other, and to be questioned by the members of this subcommittee.

The issues are many:

1. The employability of middle-aged and older workers.

2. The question of compulsory retirement.

3. The types of barriers to employment.

4. The kinds of new jobs for which we ought to be training unemployed older workers, et cetera.

I hope that in the limited time available today, we can get into these and related matters.

The subcommittee has copies of the statements submitted by each of our panelists today, and it is my understanding that we will have oral summaries of these statements, followed by a general discussion. The first discussant is Prof. Eli Ginzberg, director of the conservation of human resources project, at Columbia University.

Mr. Harold W. Williams, executive director of the Pennsylvania Advisory Board of Problems of Older Workers, will be the second discussant.

He will be followed by Mr. Charles Odell, of the United Auto Workers' Department of Older and Retired Workers; Mr. Dwight Sargent, personnel director of the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York; and Mr. Louis Kuplan, executive secretary of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Aging of California, and president of American Gerontological Society.

STATEMENT OF DR. ELI GINZBERG, PROFESSOR, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, DIRECTOR OF CONSERVATION OF HUMAN RESOURCES PROJECT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Prof. GINZBERG. I would suggest first that the statement that I have prepared to be inserted in the record as a whole at this point.

Senator MCNAMARA. Without objection, we will follow that procedure.

(Prof. Ginzberg's prepared statement follows:)

PERSPECTIVES ON THE OLDER WORKER

These brief notes have been prepared in light of the four major objectives of the subcommittee-to study the major problems of the aged; the existing programs of agencies; the present role of the Federal Government; and any additional Federal programs which should be undertaken. The burden of these notes is not to deal specifically with one or more of the major objectives but rather to set before the subcommittee some broad considerations about the older worker aimed at suggesting how one should think about the older worker.

1. WHO IS AN OLDER WORKER?

It all depends on his occupation and the state of the economy. A baseball player is old at 40; a Supreme Court justice is old only when he says he is. In a period of widespread unemployment such as afflicted the United States during the great depression of 1929-33 it was common practice for employers to stipulate that they would hire no one above the age of 35. In the period since the end of World War II which has been characterized, except for short periods of recession, by a high level of employment, the maximum age at which

employers have been willing to take on new workers has been considerably above the 35-year depression standard.

2. WHO DOES THE OLDER WORKER COMPETE WITH?

In addition to the state of the economy, the employment of older people is greatly influenced by the trends in the labor force. During the past decade the labor force has grown primarily through the addition of older men and women since the number of young people coming of working age was very small, reflecting the extremely low birth rates of a generation earlier. Employers had only one option: hire and retain older workers or fail to expand.

The prospective employment situation in the decade ahead is less favorable from the viewpoint of older people. We are beginning to see an increase in the number of young people entering the labor force and by the mid-1960's the increase will be substantial, reflecting the high birth rates during and after World War II. The 1960's will also see substantial increases in the numbers of the population reaching 65.

3. TO WHAT EXTENT DO OLDER MEN AND WOMEN FACE DIFFERENT PROBLEMS OF EMPLOYMENT?

To begin with it is important to stress that the marked increases in the employment of women which have characterized the American economy since 1940 (see National Manpower Council's Report on Womanpower, Columbia, 1957) have been concentrated in the age groups 35 to 55. Approximately three out of every five women who work are married; and about half of all working women are above 40 years of age.

While a much smaller proportion of women than men in the age group above 55 have been in the labor force, it is worth noting that during the 1950's the trend for men has been stable in the 55 to 65 age group and declining above 65 while there have been marked percentage gains for women up to 65. There are many factors at work, not the least important is the fact that women tend to live substantially longer than men-about 6 to 7 years on the average. Considering the fact that they tend to marry men who are on the average about 3 years older, they are likely in their late fifties, sixties, or seventies to be a widow. For economic and psychological reasons many seek and secure employment. The fact that so many of them are willing to work part time (less than 35 hours) and the further fact that the types of jobs available can make use of part-time female workers (selling, cashier, supplemental office work, service jobs, etc.) facilitates their being hired, among other reasons because the employer can usually avoid making various fringe benefits including participation in pension schemes available to them.

4. THE OLDER WOMAN WORKER: THEN AND NOW

During World War II the War Department had a rule that women over 40 should not be sent overseas for fear that they might soon experience menopausal difficulties and, becoming ineffective, would have to be sent home. This attitude reflected among other things the unfavorable experience of many employers with older women workers. It must be recalled that in earlier generations a much higher proportion of older women workers were spinsters many of whom had developed rigid personalities which often made it difficult to deal with them in a work situation. Today the vast majority of older women workers are married or have been married but some of the old attitudes still persist. Moreover, it should be noted that advances in chemotherapy and the psychological gains from being gainfully employed have probably reduced substantially the orders of difficulty that many women used to contend with during the menopause.

5. AGE AND EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES

A common error is to think exclusively of the employment problems of the older worker in terms of hiring. There are at least three other major facets that warrant consideration: training, promotion, and retirement. A few brief comments about each:

Hiring: Men who carry their skills with them, such as craftsmen or professors, will encounter fewer difficulties in finding a job in their fifties or even their sixties than will men whose value to the employer requires a considerable period of training and experience in a specific company and on a specific job. Other

relevant factors are whether a candidate for employment must pass a stringent physical examination and whether he must be automatically included in various group insurance and pension schemes. The Carnegie pension system (TIAA) has contributed markedly to the mobility of professors in the upper age levels; and certain union pension plans have likewise made it easier for their older members to find work with a new employer.

Training: A major reason why employers hesitate to hire older workers is their disinclination to make a sizable investment in their training when they may not have sufficient years of employment before them to justify the outlay. There is also a widespread belief that it is more difficult to train older persons. Clearly age may be a significant consideration in training in some fields where reaction time is crucial but it may be irrelevant in many other

areas.

In

Promotion: Employers frequently assume that jobs involving substantia) responsibility can be effectively handled only by people in their prime. creasingly men in their late forties or fifties, not to mention their sixties, are passed over for promotion on the score that they are too old. In some cases they may well lack the physical or emotional energy that the post demands but in a great many instances the assumption is made that they lack the requisite qualities solely on the basis of their chronological age. The large number of statesmen in their sixties and seventies who in recent decades have performed with extraordinary skill is proof enough that such broad generalizations are not only dangerous but wrong.

Retirement: It is important to recall that problems of retirement came to the fore in the early 1930's when many business and other organizations sought to make place for younger people by speeding the retirement of older persons. Special inducements were offered to men to stop working as early as 60 or in some cases even as early as 55. Having established the principle of compulsory retirement at a fixed age, usually 65, many corporations continued the practice even after the conditions in the labor market altered.

It would be a serious error, however, to assume that compulsory retirement is the inevitable fate of every older worker. Far from it. The system applies primarily to executives in large organizations. It affects a smaller proportion of clerical workers and still much smaller proportions of factory employees. For instance, steelworkers and many others can stay on their job as long as they are capable of performing effectively. It must also be borne in mind that a high percentage of all workers are self-employed or work for small employers who are much less likely to have a policy of forced retirement.

6. THE IMPACT OF THE UNION

It would be no exaggeration to contend that a major reason for unionization is to protect the rights of the older worker to his job and to the perquisites which come with it. Seniority is of the essence of unionization and critics have pointed out that if discrimination exists, it is usually against the younger worker.

The pressure of strong unions has built in many safeguards for older workers not only in companies where unions are strong but also where they are weak or nonexistant. For strong employers who seek to restrict the growth of union power are likely to offer their workers the same and frequently even better conditions than a unionized firm.

7. THE OLDER WORKER: MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW

It is important to recognize that as with most social issues the older worker can be considered from multiple points of view-the individual, the employer, the economy, and the society.

Many individuals stay at work past 65 but others capable of continuing to work are forced to retire and are unable to find a suitable alternative.

But it does not follow that it is necessarily bad when an individual who wants to keep on working is forced to retire. No one who has been employed in an organization where the head was physically, mentally, or emotionally unable to perform his functions effectively because of age can doubt that there are different points of view possible about retirement depending on who is looking at the problem. If promotion is from within, the only chance to maintain the interest and drive of younger people is to give them a chance to get ahead and this they can do only if the people in front of them move on.