Monthly Archives for March 2002

Supreme Court Jumps into Age Discrimination Debate

Published in Pawtucket Times on March 25, 2002

In 1983, my 70-year-old father expressed his concerns about job hunting in his senior years.

Like many at his age, he was not considering retirement but was seeking a new professional challenge. He began to put out feelers for new employment while still being employed by a Dallas, Texas-based retail chain after m ore than 40 years of service.

They won’t hire me if they find out my age,” my father staid, adding that he believed that job experience gleaned from years of employment is not valued by many in corporate America.

Sadly, my father’s fears of age discrimination expressed to me years ago is still documented today by the federal government.

Last year, more than 20 percent of the 80,840 discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against private-sector employers were related to age discrimination.

Last week, the Supreme Court jumped into the age discrimination debate and will determine whether seniors have the same legal rights as other types of discrimination claim suits do.

Layoffs at the Florida Power Corporation during a series of reorganizations led to the termination of Wanda Adams and 116 older workers.

More than 70 precent of these persons were at least 40 years old or older. A lawsuit, Adams vs. Florida Power Corp. was filed, claiming the Florida-based corporation discriminated against older workers based on their age in violation of the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Under the 1967 federal statute, older workers must not be treated differently than younger workers because of their age.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the trial court’s decision that older workers could challenge their termination by proving that their employer’s action had a discriminatory motive or intent (disparate treatment) rather than a disproportionate impact (disparate impact) on older workers.  AARP believes that this court ruling would make age bias suits tougher to prove, giving employers a greater ability to trim their payrolls of older workers.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court is posed to consider a hot judicial issue, especially one that will impact millions of employed aging baby boomers.

AARP, a Washington, DC-based aging advocacy group that represents more than 35 million members, has filed a “friend of the court brief” showing that its support of disproportionate impact, for use in proving age discrimination suits.

The nonprofit group says that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that these types of suits are allowed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to prove discrimination based on an employee’s gender, religion or race.

AARP official Laurie McCann states that if the U.S. Supreme Court supports AARP’s legal position, then older workers can win suits by not having to show employer’s intent to discriminate.

“Older employees will always find it hard to prove intent, because it’s difficult to get inside the employer’s head to get evidence as to what they are thinking.”

McCann says oral arguments were heard on March 20, and the justices ruling should be expected to the end of June.

“We will explore  the possibility of a legislative fix,” she adds, “to allow older workers to prove age bias if they’ll company’s practices and policies has a disproportionate impact on older workers.”

Adds AARP State Director Kathleen Connell, “Once unemployed older workers face sharply limited employment opportunities, re-employment after job loss declines dramatically at older ages.

“Older workers have a fundamental right to work in an environment free of age discrimination,” she says. “Age discrimination can be blatant or subtle and can include such practices as refusing to hire or promote older workers, encouraging their retirement, targeting them in reductions in force, curtailing their employee benefits on liming their training opportunities job responsibilities and duties.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules to make age bias suits tougher to prove, then aging baby boomers will continue to face the same concerns of my father’s generation – that age discrimination runs rampant throughout corporate America.

When reviewing the merits of the Adams case, it is hope that the justices will see the wisdom of giving older workers the same legal clout as women, minorities, gays and religious persons. Courts have allowed these groups to legally challenge racial, sexual or religious discrimination on the grounds that an employer’s actions had a disproportionate impact on them.

It’s time to protect older workers, too. It’s only fair.

Program Allows World War II Vets to Get High School Diplomas  

Published in the Pawtucket Times on March 18, 2002

Thousands of young students across the nation left their high school studies to join the armed forces during World War II.

Their high school education would instead be gleaned from life experience learned on the bloody battlefields rather than from school textbooks.

Former Pawtucket resident George Redman, a World War II veteran, along with others, will receive his long-awaited high school diploma in May, courtesy of a state initiative dubbed Operation Recognition.

The City of Pawtucket has joined other Rhode Island communities in conferring diplomas to aging war veterans in their 70s and 80s who were honorably discharged between Sept. 16, 1940 and Dec. 31, 1946. Diplomas can also be awarded posthumously. Additionally, those who have earned GEDs are also eligible to receive their diplomas.

For many like then 17-year-old Redman, high school took a back seat as the clouds of war swirled over Europe. Times were tough for the youngster’s family because the Great Depression was just ending. It became necessary for Redman to take a job to help his disabled war veteran father supplement the family’s coffers. It became a very easy decision for Redman, who was playing baseball Pawtucket Red Sox, to drop out of Pawtucket High School’s Class of 1939.

Initially, Redman had wanted to serve on an aerial bomber. Coming from a military family fueled this high school dropout’s desire to serve his country even more, says the longtime resident of North Attleboro. He claims that his uncle was the first Pawtucket resident to die in the Great War of 1917.

“Wait until they call you,” his mother urged. That is what the young Redman did, taking a night shift job at New England Pretzel Company, packing hundreds of boxes of salty pretzels each shift. Before he entered military service, the young man would ultimately become a drill press operator at H P& B American Machine Company.

When his draft notice arrived in 1942, 21-year-old Redman gave up his manufacturing job, traveling to Fort Devens in Avery, Mass., for training. Later he would travel to Oklahoma and Texas for field training before being sent overseas to fight in the bloody Italian Campaign. Two bullets from a German machine gun in 1944 ended Redman’s military career. Upon his discharge, he returned to the states with a Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Bade and the Bronze Star Medal.

Redman would later re-enroll at Pawtucket Hight School, but a bout with the flu forced him to withdraw from his studies. Not having hs high school diploma never negatively impacted his career selling office supplies and equipment. “You learned your trade on the road,” he quips.

More than 50 years after World War II, not graduating high school, however did come back to haunt him. The retired war vet called a local college to inquire taking paralegal courses. Not having is diploma effectively blocked his admission to take courses.

“Right there, I knew that I needed that high school diploma to further my education,” Redman says. “Any college course I wanted to take would require my diploma.”

Like Redman, Pawtucket resident Henry Fugere, 78, a World War II veteran who is a retired electrician from Rhode Island Hospital never graduated from high school. Helping to support his 15 sibling and a nation mobilizing for war ended his dream of  obtaining a high school diploma.

“Getting my high school diploma is now a matter of principle,” Fugere says, explaining why he filed out his application to participate. “I will feel a little bit prouder of myself for getting that diploma. I didn’t earn my diploma by sitting at a desk buy by the hard way, through serving my country and the many jobs I held.”

A chance conversation by Assistant General Manager Laureen Grebien, of Gregg’s Restaurant on North Main Street, Providence with Redman ultimately got Pawtucket City Councilor Donald Grebien involved in bringing  Operation Recognition to Pawtucket.

Grebien remembers his wife, Laureen, waking him up at 11:30 p.m. that night to tell him of her conversation with Redman and about the war vet’s desire to get his high school diploma.

After contacting local veterans groups, the Rhode Island Veterans Affairs Office, and checking the Internet for programs implemented by other states, Grebien said, “things just snowballed.”

With the blessing of the Pawtucket City Council President John Barry, Grebien created a Veterans Ad Hoc Committee that would later hammer out Pawtucket’s Operation Recognition program. Members include Grebien along with School Committee Chair Raymond Spooner. Santa Almeida, a veteran and president of AFSCME Local 1012, Ken McGill from the mayor’s office and representatives of the Pawtucket School Department.

Thirty-plus meetings held over the last year have created Pawtucket’s Operation Recognition Program, promoted it and have planned the upcoming graduation ceremony on May 31 at Veterans Amphitheater on Roosevelt Avenue, Grebien says.

“Promoting the program heavily in newspapers, on cable TV and to veterans groups is key to our success,” Grebien notes, because lack of records block the efforts to develop accurate listing of all those eligible to receive a high school diploma. High school yearbooks, with a listing of students from 1941 to 1946, were used to identify potential candidates.

“Approximately 10 veterans responded,” Grebien adds, noting that he hopes to identify other eligible former veterans, too.

Ad Hoc Veterans Committee member Ray Spooner, who chairs the Pawtucket School Committee stands strongly behind the program.

“Their education was sacrificed for our freedom,” he says. “After all these years we are giving seniors their just due for all their years of service to their country. For all the people that we can find who are eligible to participate, they deserve getting their diplomas.”

Applications to participate in Operation Recognition for War II Veterans are due on March 31.

The Best Of…Old Tales of Ireland Add Comedic Dimension to Concert

Published March 11, 2002, Pawtucket Times

            Some people just know what they want to do in their professional careers.  But like many others, world-renowned Irish Storyteller Jimmy Kennedy fell into his chosen trade.

            Kennedy became a comedian by accident.  The 77-year-old, Dublin-born Kennedy chuckled when he was asked to remember an event that took place at the beginning of his career — an event that played a key role in changing his life.  The budding singer was asked to replace a comedian who failed to show up at a variety show.  So like a trooper, Kennedy went onstage and told a few traditional Irish stories.

           “I had a few stories that I had told around the table at the local pub,” Kennedy said. “I simply told those stories, he said, explaining in his heavy Irish brogue, this accident had pushed him into a life-long career of comedy.

           Kennedy known as “Ireland’s Master of Mirth, comes to Pawtucket next Saturday on St. Patrick’s weekend to perform with the internationally renowned Three Irish Tenors. The trio is comprised of Tom Cregan, from the Royal Opera Convent Garden; Claran Nagle from Riverdance: The Show; and Anthony Norton, from La Scala Milan.  Joining Kennedy and the Three Irish Tenors is Soprano Jacqueline Whelan and her Irish harp, as well as a  host of dancers and musicians.

           The Irish performers come to the Tolman High School auditorium in Pawtucket on a three week nationwide tour of the United States.  The Pawtucket stop is their only appearance in Southern New England. This is Kennedy’s fourth tour with the Three Irish Tenors.

           During the two-and-a-half hour show, Kennedy will dress as a Seanchai, and an old storyteller who wears and old suit and cap, holding his walking stick.  He will sit next to a turf fire and spin this tales.” It’s a family oriented show that provides great entertainment for both seniors and their grandchildren,” said Kennedy, who explains that shows like this usually play in Irish hotels during the summer throughout Ireland.

          Neither Kennedy’s father, who worked in the whisky business, or his homemaker mother, who cared for her 11 children, ever showed any inclination of going into show business.  But he young Kennedy did. At age 11, he was a “boy soprano” in the church, belting out our songs to his congregation.  Three years later, he would win a talent competition at Dublin’s Queen Theatre, fanning his love for appearing before audiences.

           Add these early experiences with daytime jobs on radio and in television, and Kennedy was ready to  hit the road to perform.

          “I have been on the road touring for most of my life,” said Kennedy, who noted that show business had enabled him to travel to many parts of the world that he could not afford to see.  His performance tours began in 1943, later taking him throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, the Far East, the United States and Canada and to Bermuda, the Caribbean and Alaska on cruise ships.

          During World War II, a patriotic Kennedy entertained American troops in Germany with his Irish songs and comedy routines.  One such tour led him to meeting a dancer who would become his future wife. Of course, his two children and grandchildren are musically inclined.

          With more than 60 years invested in show business, Kennedy said he has played with some of the names in the Irish entertainment industry, specifically the Irish Rovers, Dame Vera Lynn, who was known as the “armed forces sweetheart,” Paddy Noonan, Noel henry, Jimmy O’Dea and Stanley Hollway, the famous British actor who played in “My Fair Lady.”

          Kennedy also played at the Gaiety Theater in Dublin in the early 1950s, which was one of the highlights of his career..  At this widely respected theater, he went on stage with the late comedic actor Jimmy “Odea.

           “To play the Gaiety in Dublin was considered to be a feather in your cap,” he quipped.

           During his career, Kennedy has recorded his comedy routines on a number of albums including “Innisfree,” “Green Isle, Sounds of Ireland,” and “A Little Bit of Irish.”

          What’s the secret to his success of being a “Seanchai?”

           Kennedy said his routines concentrate on good, clean Irish humor. “It is stories of Irish life and situations,” he noted.

           Kennedy Does not plan to retire soon, saying, “the great thing about show business is that there is no retirement as long as people want to see you.” He added, “I often say to people that when I walk up in the morning, ‘this may be my last day.’ Someday I will be right.”

             Now that’s humor.

              The event is being sponsored by the Northern Rhode Island Council on the Arts and Convergence Pawtucket. 

                Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.