Should Older Employees Be Paid Less?

In many industries, older experienced employees are paid less than the new hires that are hired?

What is your opinion of this trend?

TMT

Trend? It's not a trend where I work.

TMT,

It sounds like where you work the
compensation system is all screwed up.

TMT:

You might want to give us more info. Yes, Hot ticket college pretty-boys will get paid more than older workers on the line. That is not a like for like comparison.

Hiring is like a bet. You know the older workers, why wager that someone totally new to the job will do better than they and make you the return on their higher pay?

Never heard of it.

However, experience is one thing and knowing modern skills is another. I work with people that refuse to use computers. If some kid comes along that knows CAD, CNC, Microsoft office who is worth more?

Old, experienced people are valuable IF they have upgraded their skill level. To do the same old thing for 30 years is not a good thing.
Jim

I suspect this happens quite abit. But the reasons are different than most think about. Biggest reason I can see is the fact some jobs are difficult to hire for, this if nothing more than you can't find anyone interested or trained to do the job. My present employer has this problem in our area all the time depending on the type of job they are looking to fill. Mostly installation and field services on commerical laundry equipment used in the healthcare and hotel trade.

(A side note, I must say I read with amusement about the handwashing habits in another thread, working with laundry equipment in the healthcare industry, you constantly wash your hands as that grease under you nails may not be grease. More to the point, even old folks gotta poop sometimes and many times it is in bed and those sheets has to be washed.)

After a while the employer comes to a point where he has to raise wages close to that of what they are paying the more experienced help. So the new person is only a little behind in pay of what the guy whose has worked for the same company for years makes. Its either this or he doesn't have the staff to attend to problems when needed, once this happens he loses money and perhaps business.

Number 2, if the older employee has hit the wage ceiling at some point in the past and the company has quietly move the ceiling up not saying anything. Why give them a raise if they think they are at the top already?

Number 3, Perhaps the older employee has slowed down to the point that his work isn't top notch any longer and his pay raises over the recent years has reflected this.

I must say that I ran my own small repair business for 15 years before coming to work for a good company about 9 years ago. So I have been on both sides of the fence. I point out the first three reasons only to inform, not to point fingers.

I once knew a guy who would put "10 years' experience" on his resume, when he should have said "1 years' experience repeated 10 times".

Charles

"Why give them a raise if they think they are at the top already?"

The obvious reason of course is that he may
realize he's worth an extra 25% at your
competitors, and depart - leaving his former
employer (cheapskate) to realize that what he
really did there was vital to getting products
out the door.

And nobody else (no matter how well-compenstated)
seems to know which end of the soldering iron
gets hot....

Jim

Maybe I'm reading into this with a different perspective being an ex-older worker form a different industry.
No ones mentioned incentive! All workers have been promised the moon, the older ones just don't have any room left where the sun don't shine. As time goes on we all build up a bag of tricks, some of which are quite admirable. Are you going to open that up in the begining or hold some back to impress as time goes on? Once you find your treated as the others or "less" and you gave all, your sunk and the job becomes "take his money and go home". Young workers give all, fearing every day will be the last.
As time goes on machinery and production reach greater efficientcy which reflects profitability to the owners, I'd like to add #4 to Rusty Bates list: Because his pay raises haven't increased in recent years, the older employee has slowed down to the point his work isn't top notch any longer.
I have seen this form of prevaling prejujis happen to many people I know and if you think a minute you'll probably have a candadite or two also!
Steve

If you are in a technical industry, you might think twice about your treatment of older employees. The good ones know where all the bones are buried.

That is the last kind of person who you want going to a competitor and doing a know how-show how act.

Experience consists of making mistakes. It's worth something to have the mistakes made and dealt with rather than still to come.

Jim

Probably be best not to consider their ages, only their skill levels and attitude about work.

I don't understand Youth orientation in most industries. If you're talking Fashion Modeling maybe it's the case, but getting a task done?

Yeah, there are some places who like to hire kids, like some guys like young virgin girls. The knowledgable older person knows what their time is worth and knows how to get the job done. They also know how to handle people who are pulling a fast one on them.

I know all of the myths that kids are young and full of energy, but I sure seem to have seen partied out slugs with no sense of responsiblity. They're more lethargic than Nursing home inmates.

Kids are more idealistic too. They know things, things that might not even matter, which are wrong in some cases. They're absolutely sure they're right.

Some of the older workers I've seen, especially the ones who keep in shape, watch their diets and lifestyles and stay current (formal or informal education).... if you treat them poorly it's like tossing money out the door.

Seen too many fifty and sixty something people who just do it. They set up and make the job look easy.

Gene

GeneH wrote:
Kids are more idealistic too. They know things, things that might not even matter, which are wrong in some cases. They're absolutely sure they're right.

And there are a lot of "older workers" that are the
same. (unfortunately)
...lew...

"Seen too many fifty and sixty something people who just do it. They set up and make the job look
easy."

What happens when all those folks are gone?

I might add that in the particular trade of
machining, the wages are often so low that
employers are always dis-satisfied with the
young folks who arrive at the door seeking
employment. Often they arrive with a good
deal of baggage, including substance abuse
problems.

This might account for some of GeneH's
observations.

IMO the best mix is to put that idealistic
young buck partnered up with the steady long-time
hand. The old hand teaches the skills that
are lacking, and the young guy sometimes
infects the old hand with some extra enthusiasm.

Jim

Lowering older worker's salary, an example.

When I was in engineering school in the 70's I worked 2 quarters at video equipment division at RCA in Camden NJ as part of the co-op program they had at the school.

Your pay at RCA was totally based on your engineering rank, it went from C- up to A+. Every year you would get ranked, and while generally your rank went up or stayed the same, for older engineers it could go down, so their pay could decrease. It seemed like for older engineers derating them was a way to force them into retirement. If that didn't work, on top of the pay cut they would send you to an undesirable location.

As a co-op student you always got the worse desk, and I was put next to a pretty old mechanical engineer named Charlie. I didn't realize it right away but the fact that he had his desk in the undesirable section with the co-op students was a sign his rank was low and he was probably on the way out one way or another.

Charlie would eat lunch fast at 11:30 and then from 12 to 1 he opened up his bottom desk drawer, put his feet in it, leaned back in his chair, put his hands on his belly and slept during the lunch hour, with his cheapo striped athletic tube socks showing under the suit pants he always wore. The older engineers all wore suits, white shirts and ties.

It seemed all that Charlie did was order knobs for the video equipment and somehow he stretched that into a full day of work.

Charlie was close to a young engineer named Carrie and would give him advice and confide in him. One day Charlie came out of a closed door meeting with tears in his eyes and told Carrie that he was being sent to work at the "antenna farm". I don't know where this was but it was apparently pretty bad, being sent to work there seemed like the equivalent of being sent to Siberia.

I had never seen an older man cry so I was pretty shocked by this. Charlie stomped out of the building, and as he walked by Carrie he said in a low voice "Carrie, if you stay here you'll just be f***ing the dogs, just f***ing the dogs". I had never heard Charlie curse either, so all this made a strong impact on this young at the time co-op student.

Paul T.

I had never seen an older man cry so I was pretty shocked by this. Charlie stomped out of the building, and as he walked by Carrie he said in a low voice "Carrie, if you stay here you'll just be f***ing the dogs, just f***ing the dogs".

My first job out of college the old timers were vicious with the kids. They'd send them on wild goose chases, give them impossible Catch 22 assignments. One of them, a friend of mine who attended Penn State's School of Earth Sciences (Ceramic Engineering) used to blow his top over being sent on chores without proper tools or directions.

I soon learned that most of the "old men" were aware that they had obsolete knowledge, didn't keep up with modern techniques and couldn't compete with the kids.

They also had a line on the processes itself, which meant they could do a good job provided nothing broke. Things were almost always broken, in part because management changed the chemistry of one of the processes - to save money.

My buddy the Ceramics Engineer would talk of Rheology, liquidous temperature and and post control. His boss would say, "XXXXX, children are seen and not heard".


I was repeatedly warned NOT to use Statistical Process Control. "It'll drive 'em nuts". I did it anyhow, Shainin methods. Just had to keep it quiet.


What really impressed me was when I did some X-bar charts on one project. Our visiting consultant from a major glass maker said, "Oh look, XXXX is doing SPC"

"No, no, no!", I yelled, "That's not SPC!"

He looked like I'd taken a dump on the floor in front of him. I later heard him say, "I hate coming here. I talk and nobody listens to me. The managers wonder why I can't get anything done but they won't even put competent people in charge so I can help them out".


Later, when we shut down, these same hard boiled old men walked around in a daze. A few started tearing...

Eventually I saw men in their sixties cry like infants. Some had just bought homes. Others expected the newly elected Union to honor its promises of fat pay raises and more power.

A few died within one or two years of shutdown of cancer and heart attacks.

Never forgot that place, could me some day, one of the "old timers". Gotta stay current, gotta stay flexible.

Gene

See, I was lucky. My mentor in school was an
ex-ww2 radar engineer. He started before
transistors, and when I met him he was starting
to install microprocessors in the electronics
equipment he was designing and building for
the UW nuclear deparment's electronic shop.

He worked his way up from WW2 era technology
with hollow-state stuff, through the introduction
of the transistor, to integrated circuits, to
microprocessors.

He was a one-man band and he not only gave the
students in the shop the chance to work with
all those technologies, he REQUIRED it! We
had to design, prototype, trouble-shoot,
re-design, fabricate, install, wire, and repair
(if needed) all the stuff the shop made.

This is where I learned how to drill brass, that
was where I learned about "OSHA bolts," that's
where I first put my hand on a lathe. That's
where I learned about triggered-sweep scopes,
that's where I learned that you could go out to
lunch on fridays and have a beer and a
cheeseburger and nobody would complain.

Great job. I learned more there in the short
hours I spent, than all the classes in that
school.

Jim