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Federal Government Making Effort to Retain Older Workers
Spectrum Staff
Last
week, Senate Special Committee on Aging chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis.,
held a hearing on the federal government’s efforts to hire
and retain older workers and discuss policy changes that would help
them to do a better job.
Over the next five years, more than half a million permanent full-time federal
employees — or about one-third of the full-time federal workforce — will
be eligible to retire.
In 10 years, more than 60 percent of the federal workforce will be retirement-eligible.
Panelists at last week’s hearing recommended removing obstacles to working
past retirement age and providing incentives, such as flexible working options,
to enable the federal government to maintain the valuable skills and experience
of older workers. Improving the federal government’s hiring and retention
of older workers will also make it a model the private sector could follow, a
concept that was highlighted in the Interagency Taskforce on the Aging Workforce’s
recent report.
“With the retirement wave upon us, we must encourage employers to adopt
policies now to attract and retain older workers. Nowhere is the foreseen labor
shortage more pronounced than within the workforce of the nation’s largest
employer, the federal government,” said Kohl.
“Our commonsense policy would create a win-win situation for both older
workers and the companies that employ them,” he said.
Also last week, Chairman Kohl, Ranking Member Gordon H. Smith, R-Ore., and Senator
Kent Conrad, D-N.D., introduced S. 2933, the Incentives for Older Workers Act,
comprised of a number of provisions to increase the participation of older workers
in the workforce.
One provision would remove the penalty under the Civil Service Retirement System
(CSRS) for part-time services, correcting a disincentive for employees nearing
the end of their careers who would like to phase into retirement by working part-time.
Kohl and Smith are also expected to introduce a second piece of legislation to
promote the retention and hiring of older workers specific to the federal government
later this spring.
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