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Hrm in Action

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HRM in Action

A 66-year old man was constantly discriminated in the workplace because of his age. The man, Bobby Dean Nickel, endured unfair treatment from his supervising manager at Staples. Nickel had been working at Corporate Express for six years when Staples took over the company in 2008. Nickel believes that Staples was purposely trying to get rid of the higher paid older employees that came from Corporate Express as a way to be able to pay the original Staples employees a much lower amount.
Nickel filed a complaint in where he stated multiple times he was made fun of because of his age. Other employees would call him names such as “old coot” and “old goat.” Many other attempts were made to push Nickel to resign. He was even “suspended for taking a bell pepper worth 68 cents from the company cafeteria.” Management tried many strategies to rid themselves of Nickel; for example one strategy was to get an employee to make false statements about Nickel. Nickel was finally fired due to the taking of the 68-cent bell pepper, since it “violated the company’s zero-tolerance policy when it came to “dishonesty of any kind, including theft or misappropriation of company property.”” Nickel’s won the case on age discrimination and took home $26 million in damages. This case relates to the EEO & HRM chapter of the book as the chapter goes over all of the laws regarding equal treatment for all employees in the workplace. Do to medical advances, people are living longer and are therefore choosing to delay their retirement. Many companies are trying to rid themselves of the older workers to make room for talented young individuals. Some companies have difficulty decreasing the communication gap between older workers and younger workers, as older workers tend to be more conservative and dislike change unlike the younger workers who are spontaneous and have many new ideas. Many companies do not want to invest money in the older workers for them to learn how to manage and work with the new technological advances therefore it is easier and cheaper for the company to let them go. The supervising manager at Staples could have tried using a legal and non-discriminating approach to convince Nickel to retire. The manager could have used the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990 to downsize the amount of older workers by providing them with a severance package to motivate the older workers to retire. This article caught my attention, as I would have never expected employees from a big company such as Staples would be treated really unfairly. Whenever I think about discrimination I normally think about gender or race discrimination but never discrimination based on age. I could not believe how badly people in that company were treating Nickel. Staples’s employees went out of their way to find a reason to get rid of Nickel. According to other employees Nickel was a great worker and therefore he should have been treated with respect. Calling Nickel names and firing him over a bell pepper was petty and immature. I am glad Nickel won the case because he truly deserved to get compensated for all of the injustices he suffered at Staples.

City News Service. (2014, February 27). 66-year-old man awarded $26 million in age discrimination lawsuit against Staples. 66-year-old man awarded $26 million in age discrimination lawsuit against Staples. Retrieved August 29, 2014, from
http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-man-awarded-26-million-in-age-discrimination-lawsuit-against-staples

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