Ruling Upholding Layoff of Older Worker

Re “Older Worker’s Layoff Upheld on Economic Basis,” July 30: Having a law that makes it legal to lay off older workers to be replaced by younger, less expensive workers is a basis for eliminating all ethics in business. AARP, where are you?

Since our taxes pay for the panel that made this law, we should replace all judges and legislators who are earning more than $45,000 a year and are within 11 years of their pension benefits. They should be replaced by new graduates from law school. This should be done for economic reasons only.

Has anyone ever thought about the repercussion of workers never being eligible to qualify for their retirement program? Perhaps there should be a law that if a more senior worker is laid off, he should be able to transfer his retirement eligibility. If not, how will the baby boomer generation ever be able to accumulate retirement benefits? Oh, excuse me. I think the objective of corporations is to eliminate retirement benefits.

CAROL WECHSLER

Newbury Park

It seems to me that this decision is a bizarre distortion of the whole meaning of the statute against age discrimination.

When the court rules that “California employers can give younger workers preference over their older counterparts if the moves are economically justified,” it is essentially overturning the law itself, because it is ignoring the precise protection that the law was intended to give. If one rules out personal vindictiveness and petty prejudice, the only reason employers could possibly want the right to discriminate against older workers is economic. They do it because it lowers costs.

According to this ruling, the only older workers who would be protected by this law would be in those few instances when they were being discriminated against for personal reasons that have nothing to do with the economic interests of the business. That almost never happens!

SANFORD THIER

Palos Verdes Estates

Decisions like this create the necessity for labor unions.

Why should any employee plan to work for a company that would lay him or her off legally after five, 10, 15 or more years for a lower-paid, younger and surely less experienced employee?

V.N. ALLSTEAD

Woodland Hills