8 ms·
The abolition of mandatory retirement, and how it changed America (2011)
- llsf 6y agoAs European, is strange to see how old the US airline flight attendants are on average. In Europe, those jobs are mostly filled by young people, here in US, it tends to be the opposite of the spectrum. It is an interesting question. Where I come from there is a mandatory retirement, but it is financed by a universal pension system (like social security, based on how long and much you made during your whole life). Now once forcibly retired, nothing prevents you to start your own business and contracting if you want. Now, I get the no age discrimination intent. I am just wondering if this is a way to underpay people, and have 70yo people who still have to work to make it. Labor is more expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to mandatory retirement age. I just wish I wont have to work at 70yo. Would be nice to volunteer, or something if I feel like.
- zdragnar 6y agoI think that depends on where you are... aren't some parts like Spain and Portugal facing seriously high unemployment rates for younger people?
- llsf 6y agoI am not sure what is the effect of mandatory retirement. Maybe it is negligible and does not change much the unemployment rates. Even if we would forcedly retire everyone at 65yo in US, it might not change much how we compute the unemployment rate. Do you know if in US we count people over 65yo who are not actively working as "unemployed" ?
- nradov 6y agoFlight attendants in the US are mainly older due to union contracts. The airlines went through rapid expansion many years ago, but since then there have been repeated rounds of layoffs. The layoffs go by seniority so younger flight attendants tend to get terminated and move on to other careers. (This happened to one of my relatives.)
- newacct583 6y agoFlight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. That doesn't seem right to me. Maybe you could make the argument that European airlines have grown more in recent decades or something, but then you'd be able to see that per-airline (e.g. Virgin is mostly new hires relative to United, but Lufthansa certainly isn't).
- amadeuspagel 6y ago> Flight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. Can't find any data on this, but it doesn't seem obvious. The largest european airline is ryanair, which is an irish company. And "employers in Ireland can face [...] lesser constraints in terms of trade union involvement."[1] [1]: https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-distinctions-between-the-employment-law-landscape-in-the-u.s.-and-irela https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-disti...
- mschuster91 6y agoUS airlines have largely consolidated over the last decades and new airplanes don't require as much staff as before (basically cramming an airliner full with cheap seats instead of more staff-intensive premium offerings) which means there were layoff series.
- ghaff 6y agoI can't speak to Europe but I've been directly told that with a number of the Asian carriers, the expectation is that young, attractive, educated women become flight attendants, travel the world for a few years, get married, and leave.
- Kalium 6y agoOnce upon a time, I knew a mid-20s Chinese national lady who was a flight attendant for more or less this reason. She - and I will not presume to speak more broadly than this particular lady - definitely used it to meet and date.
- Animats 6y agoThat was the norm in the US until the 1980s. PSA stewardess class, 1974.[1] [1] http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg
- Proziam 6y ago> Labor is more expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to mandatory retirement age. Labor is more expensive in Europe because of taxes, primarily. The fully loaded cost of a professional employee is often double their salary, and sometimes more.
- baron816 6y agoTaxes to pay for pensioners, mind you.
- Proziam 6y agoUnfortunately that system isn't working for everyone. If you track the economic power of a country like Germany, their people should be wealthy beyond reason. Instead, the people are becoming poorer each generation. https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly-germans-says-study/a-50393805 https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly...
- pasabagi 6y agoThis seems like a typical outcome of Germany's approach to welfare in general - everything is extremely granular. Depending on what you're paid, how you work, and how long you've been working, you can expect utterly different benefits across the spectrum. Coming from a country with a flat pension, the difference is visible. There are a lot of really poor old people here. Then again, there are many fewer really poor young people.
- CydeWeys 6y agoAre US flight attendants older than the average US worker? I suspect not. Also, why is it mainly young people doing these jobs in other countries? Is that even a good thing? Why should relatively older, but still perfectly capable, workers be excluded from this profession? Is this job simply not as well compensated in other countries, so people leave it as they grow older and seek higher salaries?
- secabeen 6y agoThere's a lot of weird setups in how the us flight attendant pay work, largely due to how the union negotiates them. FAs are paid only while the plane door is closed, so there's a huge incentive to fly long-hauls. Also, flights are allocated by seniority, so there is a pay-your-dues period of short low-paying flights done by workers with less experience, and high-pay long haul flights are full of older, more experienced FAs.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoNot too long after 9/11, I was on a flight from San Francisco to Seoul. We were almost done boarding, waiting for the final passengers to get seated. I was in a bulkhead aisle seat, we were about ready to take off and a flight attendant took her seat facing me, and started making small talk. At one point I commented on how reassuring it was to have such a mature flight crew. She smiled and motioned towards a fight attendant in first class who was finishing her tasks. "See her? She's number 2". "Number 2?". "Yes, she has the 2nd most seniority of all 22,000 United flight attendants. 46 years." She went on, "One time, she missed her flight because she drove to the airport for a flight and fell asleep in the employee lounge. When she woke up, she thought she had already completed her flight and went back home."
- danaris 6y agoNow, this may be based on incorrect assumptions about your flying habits, but my understanding is that at least with many of the US airlines, the routes that flight attendants fly on are allotted by seniority, and the longer routes are more coveted, since they allow you to take a smaller number of flights per week to make up the number of flight hours required. This means that newer, younger flight attendants tend to fly the short domestic flights, while the longer, transoceanic flights (like the ones European travelers are more likely to see American airlines for) tend to be staffed by the older flight attendants.
- dbcurtis 6y agoNot so much allotted as at many airlines it is a “bid” process. You put in for a route, and it goes to the most senior bidders. The perq of being senior is more likelihood of getting choice routes.
- llsf 6y agoEven on the ground, at the airport the people checkin for tickets are way older in US, than their counterpart in Europe. It is not just flying attendants. But maybe this is specific to US airlines.
- dcolkitt 6y ago> Labor is more expensive in Europe Where are you getting that from? Average American wages are $63,000 per worker. Higher than any country besides Switzerland, Iceland and Luxembourg[1]. To compare to this five largest EU members: Americans are paid 28% higher than Germans, 41% higher than Frenchmen, 59% higher than Brits, and 64% higher than Italians and Spaniards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...
- 0xfaded 6y agoLabor is more expensive in Europe because workers rights add significant overhead. A simple example, 37.5h work weeks and 5 weeks paid holiday is pretty standard. Then there are severances. Also, if you look at the median US wages, it's appearant how much does there is at the top. Yes, Americans do have higher wages overall, but this is because there are fewer worker rights and less hidden costs for the employer. This does not mean labor is cheaper. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
- em-bee 6y agoin germany the employer overhead per employee is almost 100%
- 0xfaded 6y agoThat's amazing. In Denmark it's closer to 25% if you don't count severances.
- em-bee 6y agowe may be comparing different numbers. i doubt it's that low. i don't know the specifics in germany, but there is net salary and gross salary, and there are employer contributions beyond gross salary, as well as other costs. my understanding is that put everything together, the cost per employee is twice the gross salary. this includes cost for equipment, work space and whatever else you need to spend money on to help an employee to do their job. 25% seems very low. it's possibly only the taxes and insurance and related contributions. or maybe denmark calculates the gross salary different? i searched a few resources and found references ranging from 1.5 to 1.7. so not quite 100%. here is a swiss example with a compact table. https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mitarbeiter-wirklich/ https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mit... this one suggests a cost of 6900 for a 4500 gross salary. but it also adds hiring a manager per 10 employees and splitting that up among the employees being managed, bringing the cost to 8285. so yeah, it depends on what numbers we are actually comparing
- at_a_remove 6y agoI would not mind seeing this expanded. I have an observation to offer, based on "anecdata" and the like. Let's assume that the Baby Boomer generation is that standard group born between 1946 and 1964. Where I worked in 2008, I noticed a lot of the Baby Boomer crowd taking a bath on their retirement funds due to, well, 2008. Lousy investments, house-flipping, and so on. Many of them grumbled about having to delay their retirements considerably. I saw this happen in effect as these people continued to work, often a decade longer than their stated departure dates. They didn't have mandatory retirement, and so they kept plugging along. I believe this 2008 effect, combined with the relatively small cohort for Gen X, has left the Baby Boomers in power politically, in business, and in university still, leaving Gen X waiting for open positions to climb up into, but they haven't opened up yet. Indeed, with the youngest Boomers at age fifty-six, they will still be a forced to be reckoned with for at least another decade, while Gen X grows stagnant. We're a small bunch, so aside from bones thrown to us like Stranger Things or Ready Player One, we are largely ignored. We will most likely be surpassed by the Millennials. Part of this, I think, may be slightly due to the kind of fatalistic passive nature which seems to permeate much of Gen X, who are, in some sense, still waiting for the bombs to drop, assuming the acid rain, killer bees, or GRID doesn't get us first. Call it a wild suspicion, but I think Gen X will be a sort of forgotten bunch a century from now, and the lack of mandatory retirement may be part of it.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> Where I worked in 2008, I noticed a lot of the Baby Boomer crowd taking a bath on their retirement funds due to, well, 2008. How did they take a bath on their retirement funds? Did they sell everything at its lows for some reason and ignore all advice about how to save for retirement? We’ve had 10%+ returns for a decade now, they should be fine assuming they had adequate savings before 2008. I suspect most people never had adequate savings to begin with, and 2008 didn’t have anything to do with their problem, which is they simply never saved or earned enough money to retire at the quality of life they expect.
- saalweachter 6y agoThe oldest Baby Boomers were starting to retire by then. There are lots of variables, but if you're drawing down your retirement funds and the stock market is down significantly for a long period of time you may end up either having several lean years or drawing down faster while the market is down.
- vsskanth 6y agoSlightly OT, as a foreigner living in the US, the thing that really breaks my heart is seeing a 70+ yr old greeter at Walmart. I've grown up seeing many retired folks having their own tiny business or just running their family businesses, but the greeter thing doesn't sit well with me. I don't know why it makes me so deeply uncomfortable. It feels like some kind of a breakdown of a social contract.
- wetpaws 6y agoThis sounds a bit condescending and has a lot of assumptions baked in. There are legitimately many reasons why someone at 70 wants to works as a greeter, including pure boredom or curiocity.
- vsskanth 6y agoI totally understand. I have no idea about their situation and Its not a rational thing to feel. It just isn't something I was expecting to see in the US.
- dx87 6y agoThey aren't always working there because they need the money. My grandfather is in his mid 70s and works at Walmart so he has something to do.
- dang 6y agoI've occasionally talked to Uber/Lyft drivers who've said the same thing.
- scruple 6y agoMy 74 year old uncle is the same. He collects a 6 figure pension, he doesn't need the money but he does need a place to go to be around people and being a door greeter at a Home Depot (pre-covid, anyway) was what he wanted to do.
- dx87 6y ago
- xiaodai 6y agoIn Singapore they have disabled 70-80 year old servicing ppl at hawker centres. At first sight, it's kinda hard to watch.
- RyJones 6y agoI disagree - when I saw them last year, I thought it was nice that they had something to do to find meaning.
- MandieD 6y agoIt should be hard to watch: the “Pioneer Generation” was largely left out of modern Singapore's current affluence. The government is taking efforts to make sure they aren’t living in utter poverty, but they didn’t have the well-paying jobs to build up nice pensions like their younger counterparts have: https://www.pioneers.sg/en-sg/Pages/Home.aspx https://www.pioneers.sg/en-sg/Pages/Home.aspx This is the government talking about what their lives are like. Imagine the harsher reality.
- Mengkudulangsat 6y agoThat will be a creative way to teach people to be nice and less callous to service workers if the attitude trickles down.
- alan-crowe 6y agoWhat does "servicing ppl at hawker centres" mean? ppl? hawker? I've no idea.
- taejo 6y agoPpl are people. A hawker centre is something between a street food market and a food court (specifically in Singapore).
- zt 6y agoMost consulting firms (BCG, Bain, McKinsey) and accountancies (KPMG, Deloitte) have incredibly strong incentives for partners to agree to leave in their early 60s.
- gruez 6y agoWhy? Do people not like old consultants?
- nmfisher 6y agoI suspect because they need to dangle the carrot of partnership in front of younger managers, otherwise they’d leave. It’s a big issue in law firms, where senior associates (the ones who actually are responsible for 99% of the work) get fed up waiting for 70+ year old partners to step down.
- tehjoker 6y agoSounds like it could be okay so long as all the benefits that made it possible come back too. Otherwise, we'll be in a Dickensian situation where the capitalists yell "Are there no workhouses?!" at impoverished elderly that they forced themselves to lay off.
- cheese_van 6y agoThe US Foreign Service still enforces mandatory retirement. I purposely retired early to avoid the indignity of being told "you're too old to work for us anymore, here's your hat, there's the door." I didn't want to go out that way.
- rmrfstar 6y ago> The US Foreign Service still enforces mandatory retirement This is just bad strategy. The foreign service is the field where wisdom and experience count the most. The only thing new in the world is history you don't know.
- ABoldGambit 6y agoCut-throat business practices couched in the language of “freedom to choose”. Let me retire on a good pension at 60 like my grandparents all did. The world is supposed to be getting better not worse. If i want something “to do with my time” when I’m in my 60s and 70s (if I’m even lucky enough to live that long: many aren’t, and never get to stop working) I want to help out at a local social club or volunteer for a charity, not get paid a pittance to greet customers until my hips collapse.
- mikem170 6y ago>Let me retire on a good pension at 60 like my grandparents all did. My theory: The economic success of my grandfather, part of the post-WWII "greatest generation" in the U.S., was an anomaly. After WWII the U.S. economy was experiencing unique boomtimes. They won the war with their economy intact, and were by far the most productive country on the planet. Since then, besides reverting to the mean, globalism and information technology has changed everything. My grandfather had a 4th grade education, retired from his job at a steel plant, and lived in three of four houses he owned in two states. That is simply not the way the world works any more. From an economic perspective he was in the right place at the right time. A couple generations earlier he would have been a poor farmer. A generation or two afterwards he would have been a working-poor service worker. Like I said, this is a theory of mine, that the economy of post-WWII American was an aberration and should not be considered the normal state of things. For those couple/few decades the U.S. was the factory and research powerhouse of the world, other manufacturing bases didn't exist or were rebuilding. I welcome comments.
- rland 6y agoI agree, and it's the same reason I take investment advice from all 50s/60s born with a huge grain of salt. "Put $10,000 in an index fund when you're 23 years old and you'll be a millionaire when you retire!" There are so many assumptions being made there that it boggles the mind. What if the economy doesn't grow 3% yoy for my entire life! What if it just... levels off? Piketty pointed this out: in the early 1800s, authors would mention actual numerical dollar amounts paid for goods in books and plays. Because for all of prior history economic growth was a few basis points per year, at best. So a British pound earned in 1600 would be roughly comparable in value to one spent a hundred years later.
- marzetti 6y agoUS Presidents need a mandatory retirement age.. perhaps 70 is a suitable round number...
- kevin_b_er 6y agoAmerican is back to working until you die. Its what the plutocrats wanted. We had a brief go at labor rights, but its gone now, destroyed by the greed.