Monday, April 09, 2007

Disparate Impact

I was a little unclear on if disparate impact applies to ADEA. If it does, would these decisions about pension plans create a greater impact on older employees? Even if there are just as many young people who have pension plans as elders, isn't there a greater impact on those who are about to retire?

1 Comments:

Blogger Eric Mumm said...

Ryan, you are definitely right that there is a greater impact on those who are about to retire. The pensions are based on salary information and years of service in the company. I'm sure this would be a disparate impact claim.

While I think disparate impact claims are allowed for age discrimination, this is a good example of how hard they are for the employees to win.

When Professor Prenkert mentioned that employees (plaintiffs) have a great burden of proof in many cases, I think this is one of them. I assume that they (the employees) will lose unless the impact is incredibly outrageous.

As an accounting student, I know that pension accounting rules have been a problem area that is still hard to define. For that reason, it sounds like IBM got away with freezing pensions to save money.

7:00 PM  

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