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Personnel News

JPL Will Pay $10 Million Fine For Age Bias Toward Employees

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 6, 2020
JPL Will Pay $10 Million Fine For Age Bias Toward Employees

Jet Propulsion Lab to Pay EEOC $10 Million for Alleged Age Bias, Bloomberg Law (Paywall)
“NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory agreed to pay $10 million and revamp its employment practices to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging the lab’s layoff and rehiring policies had an adverse impact on employees 40 and older when conducting layoffs and rehiring.”
NASA Lab Inks $10M Deal To End EEOC Age Bias Suit, Law 360 (Paywall)
“The Pasadena-based laboratory that builds planetary robotic spacecraft entered into a consent decree with the agency Friday to end the Age Discrimination in Employment Act allegations by a class of workers who said they were forced to retire or were laid off after they turned 40. “Since at least 2010, defendant systemically, disproportionately adversely impacted employees aged 40 and older for layoff and rehire compared with employees aged 39 and younger,” the complaint filed Friday said, adding that the actions were willful. In addition to the $10 million that will be distributed to the former workers, the lab will have to hire a diversity director to help the lab retain and recruit individuals of all ages and a layoff coordinator to make sure that employment decisions are lawfully made. The agency said it was forced to file suit after making multiple attempts to sort out the dispute through conciliation.”
Keith’s note: JPL response: “We are pleased to have worked collaboratively with the EEOC on a resolution to bring the matter to a close. The Lab has a longstanding commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace, free of discrimination. JPL is stronger because of our diversity and we value all our colleagues at every stage of their career.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

12 responses to “JPL Will Pay $10 Million Fine For Age Bias Toward Employees”

  1. fcrary says:
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    Does anyone know the legal status for age discrimination? Are people over a certain age considered a protected class? They are according to my own institution, but our policies tend to be stricter than federal law requires. If so, I wonder how this meshes with NASA’s various programs to help and promote the careers of “early career” scientists (typically defined as people who got their doctoral degree within the last seven years.) That sort of thing has always been a complicated legal issue.

  2. Nick K says:
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    Yes they are a protected class. While NASA does lots of training for employees and managers, it does not seem to take. There is bias and discrimination all the time. Unfortunately from the sounds of this resolution the people who got hurt get nothing. The people who caused the damage do not get penalized; they may even get promoted. JPL loses a few dollars which hurts the taxpayer’s programs. Basically if you are at a lot of NASA facilities and in many programs or projects you better get all your promotions and get yourself situated by about age 40 because the likelihood you’ll get the next one is slim to none.

    • Roger Jones says:
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      It’s important to remember here that while JPL is part of NASA, it is operated and staffed entirely under contract; JPL staff is employed by Cal Tech, not NASA.

      That said, your comments about “lots of training for employees and managers, it does not seem to take” are evergreen and apply to many many large organizations across the country and around the world. Perhaps that’s more of a comment on the unfortunate state of the human condition, rather than NASA or JPL.

      • fcrary says:
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        I’m not sure why JPL’s status matters. Federal anti-discrimination laws apply to everyone, not just government agencies. Some of those laws (but not age discrimination ones) are stricter for government agencies. Some, in the past, have actually been less strict (at one point, Congress passed anti-discrimination laws with a clause which exempted Congress itself…) And most of the stricter rules for government agencies also flow down to their contractors, in the form of terms on the contracts. The fact that JPL is managed by CalTech doesn’t make the legal expectation for JPL lower than those expected of NASA.

        • Roger Jones says:
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          You’re right, it doesn’t matter in any real sense – I was responding to a comment above about NASA employment practices. This specific age bias suit was against JPL, not NASA. Absolutely, the expectation is the same for all organizations.

  3. Donald Barker says:
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    Hold all immediately and highly accountable for horrible behaviors.

  4. Dirk says:
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    Do people work less as they get older? Do they slack off? Do they have lower energy for their jobs (especially after years of low morale?)? If so, should we account for that by reducing people’s income as they age (and putting those funds into much higher salaries at younger ages, when people are working harder and also hard-pressed with a new mortgage, student loans, etc.)?

    If performance does wane with age, then keeping older underperforming people in their jobs is merit discrimination against younger people.

    If we do not have the answers to the questions I pose, then how would anyone know the difference between allocating equal pay for equal work or discrimination?

    I had always thought that “age discrimination” against older people would only be validly claimed in the specific case that a person gets fired only for their age, for example, if a manager said, “I do not like people over 55. You are 56. I am firing you.”

    That is not at all what happened here, as can be seen by the “adverse effect” principle that is often used when actual discrimination cannot be shown.

    • fcrary says:
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      If firing is a valid claim, then so is hiring (or rehiring, as mentioned in this case) and promotions.

      That’s why I asked if age was a “protected class” under federal law. It is; anyone over 40 is part of a protected class. That means the same standards and conditions apply to age discrimination as to discrimination over things like race, religion or gender.

      One of those rules is that it is illegal for companies to have generic standards applied to all members of the class. Companies can’t talk about people “as they get older” or “older underperforming people.” They can, definitely, have policies about “underperforming people”, but adding “older” would make it as illegal as a policy about “female underperforming people.”

      • Dirk says:
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        I do not think that you are correct. That is, if the policy is to lay off underperformers and there are disproportionately more underperformers who are old, then it is illegal according to disparate impact. It does not matter what the policy is. It only matters what the impact is. This standard is NOT applied to “unprotected” classes. That effectively means that you have to have one standard for people in “protected classes” and another for people in “unprotected classes.”

        • fcrary says:
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          No, that’s not my understanding. A policy with a disproportionate impact can, potentially, be legal. But once such an impact is shown, the matter will end up in court and there is a very high standard for the courts to accept it. In practice, cases where that standard can be satisfied are extremely rare. But a bus company can legally require people to have a drivers license before hiring them as drivers. Even though that disproportionately impacts the blind, the courts would still allow it.

  5. Michael Spencer says:
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    A perhaps naive question: is the removal of older workers driven by payroll burden? I’m asking because in my experience there is limited equivalence between the capabilities of an employee with 25+ years’ experience and the ability of a person with <10 years’ experience.