[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E283]]
INTRODUCTION OF THE AGE DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT AMENDMENTS OF 1995

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                         HON. HARRIS W. FAWELL

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, February 7, 1995
  Mr. FAWELL. Mr. Speaker, today, I join my colleague, the Honorable 
Major Owens of New York, in introducing legislation to restore the 
public safety exemption under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act 
of 1967 [ADEA]. This exemption, which expired on December 31, 1993, 
would allow police and fire departments and correctional institutions 
to utilize maximum hiring ages and early retirement ages as an element 
of their overall personnel policies. As a general matter, the use of 
age-based employment criteria is impermissible under the ADEA.
  I believe strongly that the use of an age requirement as a 
qualification for employment is rarely justified. However, the public 
safety arena presents one of the very limited exceptions where the need 
to perform at peak physical and mental conditioning is critical and the 
natural effects of the aging process cannot be discounted. Police and 
firefighters have the safety and well-being of not only their fellow 
officers, but the general public as well, in their hands, and we simply 
cannot tolerate the risk presented by the possibility of sudden 
incapacitation or slowed reflexes.
  I recently chaired a hearing of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee 
Relations of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities on 
the need for the public safety exemption under the ADEA, and the 
testimony of firefighting and law enforcement organizations and local 
government was compelling. A representative of the International 
Association of Firefighters testified that ``the most important reason 
that public safety occupations are an exception to the general rule 
against age-based employment criteria is simply that human lives are at 
stake.'' Both the firefighters and police officers presented persuasive 
testimony that State and local governments must ensure a physically fit 
and fully qualified workforce and that there are no adequate physical 
tests available to enable them to do so without the use of age 
criteria. I might also add that essentially the same legislation 
restoring the public safety exemption twice passed the House of 
Representatives in the last Congress.
  Drawing a line between the employment rights of one group of 
Americans and the general good of all Americans is never easy. However, 
given the increasingly difficult task facing both the law enforcement 
and firefighting communities, I do not feel we can deny them a 
personnel tool which management and labor alike feel is necessary to 
the effective performance of their jobs. I urge all my colleagues to 
join me in sponsoring the Age Discrimination in Employment Amendments 
of 1995 and in restoring the public safety exemption to the ADEA.


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