Age Discrimination

Q.2. Age discrimination can be devastating to both the employee and the firm as a whole. In my opinion when an employee is discriminated against in his work place because of his age, not only his productivity will go down, but on the long term the overall productivity and creativity of the firm will also be affected. Young employees will feel that what is happening to their senior fellow workers will happen to them eventually when they become old.

Fred Maiorino a dedicated employee was discriminated against because of his age, the best way to deal with such situations in my opinion is to stick to your job duties and to stay as professional as possible in order to avoid any serious mistakes that can be used as an excuse to lay off employees.

Maiorino gave some evidence to prove that he was being age discriminated, for example he showed the court that the company had offered employees an early out package program for employees of over 55 years of age, at the same time it hired 75-80 young sale representatives, with only few older employees accepting the offer which left the company with an excessive number of sales representatives.

Fred refused the early out package because he had a boy in college and he had to pay for weddings.

Jim reed argued that Fred had not left out of the house on morning, on which he had filled activity reports as having worked full days. Fred had complained that he could not leave the house for important reasons such as having a sick wife, morning sickness because of his high blood pressure as well as his mother in low facing a medical emergency.

One of the most important evidence of this case is having a 22 years old sales representative replacing Fred only less than a month after he was fired, which gives an idea that firing Fred was planned much earlier than it seems.

At the end I think that Fred had defended himself in a very clever yet honest way, he kept being professional and did his job well as always.

Q.3. at the beginning of the case the author points out the Lebanon is perceived to have limited legal structures relating to business activity. Which led to problems with corruption, money laundry and the escaping of talented workers mainly to the Gulf countries.

Lebanese government had taken many steps to help fight such problems. One such example would be Bicharaf which is a non-profit making organization; it aims to establishing links and partnerships with businesses and educational institutions to promote academic integrity, awareness and improved business ethics. In my opinion such steps are the key solutions to help the business people in Lebanon change the current culture about business behaviors, learn from other advanced economies their values and beliefs about hones business practices, then add the Arabic/Lebanese culture to it, and the result would be an increased business trust