Overtime attorney Philip Oliphant details how age discrimination can happen during the interview process during the Memphis Public Library‘s Senior Focus segment. Watch the video or see the transcription of the interview below.
Sunny Ross
Welcome. You’re watching Senior Focus and my name is Sunny Ross and today’s show is something I’m learning. You’re going to learn a lot unless you’re an expert person in this field, which I am not. And I am just so thrilled to have Mr. Philip Oliphant as our guest and he’s an attorney. Is that the correct title?
Philip Oliphant
Absolutely.
Sunny
Okay. And his specialty is really something that a lot of you ask me to have a guest to talk about this issue is discrimination for senior adults. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you’re short and tall, you’re black and white. Everybody under the law is equal.
So welcome to the show and I’m honored that you took time from busy schedule to help our viewers to understand some of the things. And I’m going to start by a question that came to me from several individuals.
If there is a little sign at the window of private business or a big business or online part time positions available and we go apply for that position, we never hear back because we feel like it doesn’t have the application. A line that says your birthday, but it does have a line that says, when did you graduate from high school or college? And they know our age and we don’t hear back. So, could you help the viewers?
Philip
Well, understand there’s first what the law says and then the reality. The law says that in employment, in hiring, there can be no discrimination based upon age. The reality is that discrimination based on age is pretty deeply entrenched in our society’s way of thinking. And I wish I could say I have a magic wand to make that go away, but I don’t.
The reality is that age discrimination is going to be there for at least as long as we live. But the law provides some protection, provides some avenues for relief when a person believes they’re being discriminated against.
But in terms of what we can do to avoid the kind of situation that you’re talking about and I’ve personally been in that same situation is that we just downplay our age as much as possible in the application.
But the reality is the employer wants to get at our age if that’s what they’re keen to do and they want to make a decision on the basis of age, it’s going to be very difficult to isolate that they’re actually doing that and to take legal action against them. We just kind of have to go with the flow.
We have to do our best to identify employers that don’t do that. That honor who we are and what we bring to the table as older Americans.