I see your point and acknowledge it. I, however, believe that hiring and firing should be judged on such things as work ethic, honesty, reliability, precision, devotion, and enthusiasm...not on sex, race, age, or physical appearance. I understand some physical requirements...but if you entered into a contract that did not mention these requirements, you shouldn't be forced out later for them. There should be some kind of tenure or protection after a certain amount of time. This woman had worked there for 20 years! There should be protections from ruthlessness in business, otherwise you could set up retirement for people at 20 years, then make up some crazy reason to fire them at 19! It happens out there.
Being an employee of a company at the moment, I see your point. Having been a business owner in the past, with people working for me, I also see the company's viewpoint, and I get the strong feeling that we don't have all the data here
Companies generally don't lightly fire people, if only because of the effect on morale of the remaining employees. Also, the process of evaluating replacements is costly, so firing somebody who is actually doing her job well is bad for business. The official reason for firing seems unfair, but it may have been the only reason they could come up with that was legally quantifiable, in order to do what they may have wanted to do for a while.
Where I currently work, they recently fired a guy for violating a company policy against coming to work while intoxicated. They wanted to fire him for a while, because he was incompetent. But proving the incompetence of somebody in a highly technical field to a jury of laymen is really hard to do. So they waited until they could nail him, with witnesses, on something else.
I see your point on firing people to screw them out of contracted benefits like pension, but there is no allegation in the story that this was a reason. If it was the reason, and the company displayed a pattern of trying to weasel out of contracted benefit obligations, then I would support nailing management to the wall