The 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act and after

The sequence of events leading up to the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act can now be described briefly. The growing interest in the employment problems of older workers was reflected in the world of politics by several failed attempts to introduce age discrimination legislation at federal level, to supplement the state laws. As early as 1951, Senator Jacob Javits submitted an Age Discrimination in Employment Bill in the House of Representatives, of which he was then a member. On becoming a Senator in 1957, Javits tried again in the Senate; and he was to do so regularly thereafter. An attempt to prohibit age discrimination in employment was made via the 1962 Equal Employment Opportunity Bill, but this was blocked by the House Rules Committee. Likewise, attempts by Javits and other Senators in the early 1960s to amend the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act failed, though in 1964 age discrimination in employment was made illegal where work was being carried out under federal contracts. As is well known, the solid phalanx of Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats in both Houses made legislative innovation in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years difficult, if not impossible.

Originally, age discrimination was to have been included in the 1964 Civil Rights Bill: conservative Southern senators, both Republican and Democrat, tried to make the Bill unworkable by overloading it with additional provisions. By this tactic, sex discrimination was added, but survived intact.