Senators search for ways to keep boomers on the job: Flexible schedules and other changes may be needed to head off a national labor shortage.

[1 March 2007 - Los Angeles Times] Javon R. Bea values the older employees at his network of medical facilities in Wisconsin and Illinois. To keep them on the job, he champions a program at his firm called Work to Retire that allows employees over 50 to put in fewer hours, pool jobs or work from home. "I think the mature workers can actually relate to the patients better than our more impatient younger workers," Bea, president of Mercy Health System in Janesville, Wis., said at a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday. "As a business we really think that we benefit, as well as the older workers benefit." More employers need to follow Bea's example, according to testimony at the hearing of the Senate's special committee on aging. A wave of retiring workers will weigh down economic growth in the coming years unless Americans save more and employers take steps to hang on to more of their older employees, experts said. More