Age Discrimination at Work

Age discrimination at work is a serious issue. Once workers reach 50, they are often concerned they may lose their jobs to younger and possibly cheaper staff. They also worry that their age prevents them finding other suitable jobs.

The Law

The law is clear, however: age Discrimination at Work is illegal in virtually every industry. And this protection doesn’t just apply to full-time employees. It extends to contract workers, people who are doing vocational training, and the partners in a business.

All the main areas of employment have legal protection. Among them are training, transfers, promotions, dismissals and recruitment. Employers must also not discriminate on grounds of age when they compose a worker’s terms and Employment Contract.

Date of Birth

Even so, an employer can ask for a potential worker’s date of birth. The employer should not use this information, however, to discriminate against someone. This applies whether a candidate for a post is old or young.

An employer cannot, therefore, use someone’s age to tell them he or she exceeds the age limit for a job. Setting such an age limit is illegal. The only exceptions are when the law sets an age limit, or an employer makes a case for objective justification.

Justification

Employers may argue for objective justification and set an age limit for workers. But they must show that such discrimination is a reasonable way to reach a genuine aim.

One example is physical fitness and strength. An employer may be able to prove that workers must not be above a certain age because of the physical nature of a job. If so, the law may accept this as objective justification.

Other employers misuse the law – or don’t understand it. They discriminate on grounds of age, for instance, because they want to employ younger people who match the aim of their businesses.

A common example is a shop that sells clothes to teenagers. An employer may believe that it’s reasonable to recruit younger sales assistants.

Such employers may fall foul of the law. Limiting recruitment to younger people in the above example may suit a business’ image. But it is not a genuine aim. As a result, there’s no objective justification.

Redundancy

A further area of confusion about age discrimination is the right to Redundancy pay. An employer must not impose age limits to redundancy payments. It doesn’t matter if a worker is older than 65 or younger than 18. The statutory minimum redundancy payment applies.

Some employers are also guilty of indirect age discrimination. As part of a cost-cutting exercise, for example, they may choose to make only part-time employees redundant. Such part-time employees, however, may be the older section of the workforce. If so, workers may have good grounds for claiming age discrimination.

An employer’s only defence in using age as a criterion for redundancy is to prove objective justification.

Retirement Age

The other main area of concern about age discrimination is retirement.

The accepted retirement age in the UK is currently 65. But this is not compulsory, and an employer may use this fact to set a lower retirement age.

But to retire a worker at an age lower than 65, an employer must prove that such an age is necessary and appropriate. An employer must also provide a minimum of six months’ notice of a worker’s date of retirement.