The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued ExxonMobil last month over its policy of requiring pilots of its planes to retire at age 60. The federal agency prefers individualized assessments of age-related inability to handle the duties of the job — which in this case might mean that an employer would start the removal process for an elderly pilot only after a legally bulletproof file had been assembled documenting the pilot’s decline in capabilities.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Russ Roberts said the company’s policy addressed the issue of safety and was modeled after Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. He said the policy is long-standing and consistent, not arbitrary and discriminatory.
“Our pilots face the same challenges commercial pilots do flying large, complex, high-speed jets,” he said. “We told the EEOC that we would not change our safety practices in response to complaints filed by pilots.”
(Steve Quinn, “Suit Accuses Exxon of Age Discrimination”, AP/CBSNews.com, Sept. 23). At the Denver Post, columnist Al Lewis discusses this and other recent age-bias lawsuits (“Gray hair + pink slip = lawsuit”, Sept. 27). More on the subject: Oct. 19, etc.
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It seems to me that many pilots might want a mandatory retirement age, rather than an individualized assessment. Under the former system, a pilot who steps down can tell others that he simply hit the age limit and had no choice. Under the latter regime, when a pilot steps down, that would openly signal to others that he was losing his abilities, with attendant embarrassment.
If we’re going to have laws against discrimination on the basis of age, I can’t imagine what could be clearer example of that than this. “You cannot have this job if you are over age 60.”
Yes, some people lose their faculties as they grow older. Some before age 60, some way after. The whole point of anti-discrimination laws is to force you to determine who is competent or incompetent rather than relying on a numerical cut off.
I find your speculation that removing this rule would make it too hard to fire elderly pilots to be extremely strange. Right now, it’s incredibly easy — it’s automatic. Are you saying that there are only two possibilities — too easy and too hard — and therefore we have to pick too easy?
They already have an evaluation and review process to ensure that incompetent younger pilots are fired. If that’s not sufficient, it needs to be fixed.
Exxon’s claim that it cares about safety and therefore has to maintain the policy is comical. If other policies don’t catch incompetent pilots below 60, fixing that should be their top priority.
Yes, advancing age does correlate with loss of faculties. But we have laws that prevent age discrimination in hiring, and that means that you *have* to fire a person because he no longer has the mental ability to do his job, not just because a lot of other people his age don’t.
Exxon’s claim that this is modeled on the FAA’s own rules is wrong for two reasons. First, private individuals don’t usually get to do things just because the government gets to do them. If they did, I’d start taxing my neighbors.
Second, the FAA specifically chose *not* to place an age limit on commercial pilots not involved in air transport operations. For example, if a state had a law that people who drove busses with more than 18 passengers had to pass a physical and Domino’s refused to hire drivers that didn’t pass that same physical, Domino can’t argue that they are just modelling their policy on the state law.
The state law is for bus drivers and is chosen because the state felt bus drivers pose a special risk because of the number of people they drive. The state could have extended it to commercial drivers of all kinds but chose not to.
Domino’s would be modelling their policy on state law if and only if they required drivers to meet the same qualifications state law required for the same types of operations.
There’s a simple alternative – an annual flight physical, which includes vision, hearing, eye-hand coordination, and reaction time. It works for the Air Force.
Guess what? Commercial pilots already have to pass a yearly FAA flight physical. It’s such a good idea, it’s already the law.
In fairness to Exxon, the yearly flight physical is not really designed to catch subtle reductions in mental acuity of the sort that could really make it dangerous for someone to fly an airplane. But it will catch vision problems, hearing problems, risk of suddent unexpected heart failure, and similar ailments.
They don’t want to have to be responsible for determining when a pilot can no long fly because the next time a plane crashes right after a pilot passes a checkup, they get sued for “letting someone unqualified” fly.
Exxon is wrong. If a pilot over 60 still has his wits as determined by his annual physical, let him fly. Age 60 was determined years ago when most of the country died at 65. Things change and so should this federal rule Exxon is using for justification. What about surgeons? Congressmen? Why just pilots?