Federal and state employment laws dictate that you cannot deny someone employment due to their religion, race, age, or medical conditions.
And yet, we all know that people who are older may not do so well in various types strenuous physical activity, in this case work.
They can get easily hurt, or perhaps even cause injury to another employee.
Some employers have complained that the political correctness involved in federal and state employment law is causing more harm than good, and their opinions go something like this; If I hire an employee that has ADHD, and they are driving the forklift, they may take risks that other employees wouldn't.
Therefore I should be able to ask someone on the employment application, if they are taking ADHD drugs, or if they have this condition.
However, as you may realize you are not allowed to ask anything of this nature to employees this during the hiring process.
And if you use the answers to these questions, or in some cases if you ask the question at all, and you fail to hire the individual, or even if you ask the question and hire the individual anyway, you could be opening your company up to a lawsuit.
Further, whether or not a business person's opinion in this matter is valid, or whether it is actually relevant is beside the point, as we have employment laws to protect employees from prejudicial hiring practices.
Now then, there are issues of physical endurance and physical strength which do come into play.
And someone who is in their 50s perhaps would have a tough time collecting the garbage in the event that the machinery they were operating stopped working, such as the garbage truck did not have an automatic system which picked up the trashcan to load it into the garbage truck.
They might easily become injured trying to pick up trashcans, and therefore they can cause a physical injury to themselves.
They might blow out a knee, hurt a disk in their back, or once they are fatigued they may not follow proper ergonomic procedures in lifting.
This is a common problem in warehouses as well.
Obviously corporations and small businesses want to prevent such workplace safety incidents from ever happening.
And a prudent person might take that into consideration during the hiring process.
However that prudent individual using what they believe to be common sense, whether it is or not, could be breaking employment laws.
This is why every good business person needs a good employment lawyer, and to hire trained human resource personnel who have gone through the ongoing education classes, and understand all the rules.
And those rules are constantly changing, and the corporation's liability is constantly being challenged by case law.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.