Chapter 8 covers work and leisure, or retirement, as most would call it. According to Hillier and Barrow (2011), "retirement" is a dirty word to some; to others it represents freedom from a daily grind of work and a doorway to a fresh chapter of life." Whether it is done at age 55, 62, 65, and soon 67, many people are looking forward to the day they can officially say they are "retired".
At one time many companies were pushing for the aging generation to take early retirement by offering incentive packages to do so. Reasons for the push included process improvements in manufacturing which require fewer workers, and technological advances that required the more "tech savvy" younger generation. One of the problems of taking that route, was that the younger generation provided fewer and less-skilled workers than the older generation. Companies were not bothered by this fact at first because what they saw was a younger worker with less experience for lower pay and fewer benefits" (Hillier & Barrow, 2011). This trend did not last long. With life expectancy increasing, the government began to increase the retirement age in an attempt to stabilize the Social Security Program, which pushed many to have to work longer.
With these changes by the government, come the possibility of age discrimination cases at companies who want to reduce their aging workforce in order to decrease their health care costs, reduce benefits, and lower their pay rates. Since people are living longer, bills continue to come and have to be paid, and the money has to come from somewhere, since social security does not pay much. For many people, that means continuing to work and possibly having to be retrained to do a different job.
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