Age restriction to operate warehouse equipment
idchrbee
7 Posts
Our CEO wants to implement a new policy that anyone operating warehouse equipment (fork lift, cherry picker, etc) must be at least 21 years old. I cannot find any law that says we can or can't do this. Does anyone have any input that would help me know if it is legal to adopt this age requirment?
Comments
Why does the CEO want to do that? That move would shrink your candidate pool and I can't figure out why you would want to do that.
I would think that if you had two employees with the same experience and productivity capabilities but one was 19 and one was 21, to disallow the 19 year old to run your equipment just because of age (again just my opinion), I think this could be construed as a form of age discrimination.
There are two other items to think about if you implement age restrictions: 1. are you sending a message to younger employees that your company views them as being incompetant and 2. is this age restriction going to limit the income of younger employees by disallowing them jobs on this equipment (usually equipment operators are paid a higher wage). If your employees did perceive that they were being "demoted" so to speak from this equipment, can your company handle the potential loss of these employees?
We are looking for forklift operators constantly - good ones are hard to find and keep so if I had to also comply to an age limit restriction, that would make my job even harder. Good Luck
Not saying I agree with it, just do not use the "it's illegal" argument to win your case.
I can see the CEO's point - typical 18-year-olds are lousy drivers. If you let me drive a forklift when I was 18 ... :DD But 21-year-olds aren't a big improvement.
Rather than having an inflexible minimum age, I'd consider maturity (like their driving record) as part of the hiring process.
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com