In 1967, the Age Discrimination Employment Act was legislated to protect individuals 40 years old and older from discrimination in hiring, firing, benefits, promotions, and pensions. Since then, thousands of claims have been settled by the EEOC to help employees gain back pay, reinstatement, promotions, and other compensation for unfair treatment in the workplace. More recently, the Act was amended to include new age discrimination protection in the form of the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990 (OWBP). Realizing that providing benefits to older workers was significantly more expensive than providing those same benefits to younger workers, and that that would become a disincentive to hiring holder workers, in some instances the OWBP permits employers to reduce benefits to older workers to a level at which they cost the same as benefits to younger workers.