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Long Island Business News - Weekly Edition The no joy, no luck club Friday, May 18, 2007 |
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Unemployed, they were thrown out of a diner one morning for overstaying their welcome. They weren’t homeless or penniless, but the group of middle-aged Long Islanders was familiar with desperation. Gathered to support one another’s efforts to get back into the workforce, it seems on the morning in question, with conversation flowing freely, the meeting went a bit too long. “The diner said they needed the table,” said Valentina Janek, who can laugh about it now. Janek, along with another out-of-work female executive of a certain age, founded “The Long Island Breakfast Club” about three years ago for “commiseration, compassion, to share experiences and have some good old-fashioned laughter to get us through,” she said. Janek, 54, currently director of marketing for ARS Financial in Jericho, had a career as a publishing executive and for 10 years was in management at Compaq Computer. When her division was downsized, Janek was “devastated.” “It was my life,” she said. “I loved my job.” But she didn’t mourn, she organized. Now numbering 10 and steadily growing, the club still meets regularly – but at night, since its members have all found jobs. It wasn’t easy, however. The club members – all women, “except for our token man,” Janek said – ran into thinly-veiled discrimination. Hiring a younger person means lower payouts for a company, and younger executives prefer someone younger reporting to them due to a lack of confidence, according to Janek. The most over-used expression before prospective employers slammed the door was the left-handed compliment of “you’re overqualified,” remembered JoAnn Fiorentino, 54, who was present at the club’s creation with Janek. They had met when Janek learned Fiorentino was leaving her post as senior vice president of marketing and communication for the United Way of Long Island to take a position with Long Island Head Start. Fiorentino had spent 30 years as an executive with Allstate before changing over to the non-profit world. She thought Janek would be a good fit at the United Way. But it wasn’t to be, and four months later Fiorentino found herself out of work. She was depressed, and for the first time in her career, “I felt inadequate, being turned down for jobs,” Fiorentino said. Some of the interviews were gruesome or bizarre, with one HR person asking about her political affiliations, another about the books she read, and one who told her she tied with another applicant on all levels, and so there was the equivalent of a coin toss. Both women said they, and members of their group, knew the real reason they had difficulty finding a position, even though they had years of executive experience: It was their age. Age discrimination has been against the law since 1967. Statutes protect the employed and job applicants over 40 and are steadily enforced. In fiscal year 2006, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission resolved 14,146 age-discrimination charges and recovered $51.5 million in monetary benefits for aggrieved individuals. A bottom line executive who begins to lay off older executives to bring in younger, less-expensive individuals can be easily spotted, said Professor MaryAnne Hyland of the Adelphi University School of Business. “The courts have become stricter in recent years in looking at what they call ‘mixed motives,’” she added. Mixed motives are claims by an employer that the older employee or applicant doesn’t have “a sufficient energy level or has a poor understanding of technology, but hidden in this is age discrimination,” Hyland said. All’s well that ends well, said Janek, grateful to be back at work. But she could not have made it without her club, she said, and she has big plans – looking to expand to over a hundred members and working on a book, “Life after the Big Bad Boot.” |