A public service of THE ILLUMINATOR OF MACON, GA INFORMATION CHANNEL FOR PEOPLE OVER AGE 55
12	http://www.geocities.com/ karalane_1999/index.html

From:  Kara Lane*
         Macon, GA

* NOTE:  This Petition is to be published on the web,  circulated by e-mail and listed in many search engines.  For security reasons, my residence address and other personal information will be included in correspondence addressed to the legislature, but ommitted on the pages for public access.

TO   The Honorable  Roy Barnes, Governor           Sent by fax:  (404) 657-7332
       The Honorable Mark Taylor,  Lt. Governor      Sent by fax:  (404) 656-6739

Suggested Committees:
 
 

The resultant  economic and health damages to older  Georgians, their families and their communities will,  absent instant effectual remedies,clearly and  foreseeably culminate in increasing irreparable harm to the affected individuals, their families, their communities and local governments.  Given the exigency  of this issue and evident indifference of elected officials,  necessity compels the people of this state to act, albeit by this unorthodox method.

Wherefore,  I am herewith submitting this bill for vote in the year 2001 session of the Georgia State Legislature.

      Widely known are  provisions for bolstering employment opportunites  for  two
stigmatized or disadvantaged groups -- convicted felons and welfare recipients.  Training subsidies and tax breaks encourage employers to select applicants from these two groups.  Additionally, the federal government underwrites bonding for convicted felons, when no comercial insurance company will assume the risk.   However, for an equally if not more stitmatized polulation -- workers over age 55, without criminal records and no recent welfare dependence -- non of these advantages are available.

These inequities create an unfair advantage for welfare recipients and drug traffickers,  rapists, child molesters,  robbers and murderers in competition for jobs with law abiding people over age 55, the majority of voters,  who are stigmatized  by their birth year.

From a practical perspective,  these programs may be argued to be cost effective by reducing  welfare and prison costs(by reducing recidivism),  But, in addition to the obvious moral premises,  the same arguements overwhelmingly support provisions for equal advantages for law-abiding  older workers with no  recent welfare dependence,  who are being impoverished and demoralized by labor market ageism.

These inequities and the oppression of older Americans ensue from the presumption of age 65 as the retirement age. This presumption is grounded on an artifact of depression era New Deal legislation for limiting entitlement to Social Security -- when significantly fewer people lived long past age 65 -- when the south enforced racial segregation laws in tandem with sheet- shrouded goon squads, when lobotomies were performed,  and forcibly administered  electric shock to the brain was standard mental health treatment,   when the priority careers of many or most women were subjugation to their husbands,  homemaking and motherhood.

Based on tenacious adherence to archaic expectations,  workers over age 55 continue to be disenfranchized from most employment opportunities or reduced to a labor  market underclass and denied opportunities for economic self-sufficiency because of
our age,

 As a result,  we are also deprived of opportunities to use and develop marketable skills essential to competing in a rapidly advancing society.  This adverse impact results in demoralization, deprivation-engendered costly health problems and disabilities, and  envy-evoked  annimosities toward younger age groups,   all of which culminate in social and political disharmony and dependence on families or public assistance.  And the costs to the public increase as our population grows.

Clearly foreseeable is the culmination of  continued negligence of these social and economic abominations.   Absent immediate intervention,  any cost savings of reduced welfare roles and prison populations will overridden by the costs of supporting  and treating the ensuing deprivation caused health problems of law abiding disenfranchised workers over age 55
 

REQIESTED REMEDIES

A BILL FOR AT LEAST THE FOLLOWING PROVISIONS.
 

1.  Use of a reasonable portion of  Workforce Investment Program allotments and  state and local  funds for promoting employment of workers over age 55,  by employer incentives similar to those afforded for convicted felons and welfare recipients.

2, Ensure that these  incentives are contingent upon employers' compliance with a
non-discrimination contract in  job assignments, training and  promotional opportunities, working hours and wages.

3.  Elimination of  requirements on employers for relative to retirement and insurance benefit packages,  or government subsidization of these costs, when the costs of providing such benefits to people over age 55 create an undue hardship on employers.

4.  Affirmative action policiies for workers over age 55 for private sector as well as state and local government jobs. The  proportions are to be computed in terms of the number of qualified applicants and the local population,  by formulae relied upon in gender and racial recruitment policies.

Proposed and submitted by
 

Kara Lane
karalane1@earthlink.net

E mail me,  if you want to participate in a demonstration protesting labor market ageism at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta..