27 May 2005

Keeble Hawson

http://www.keeblehawson.co.uk

Age Discrimination - Are You Ready Yet?

The recent news that a 60 year old school teacher was forced to retire from the school where she taught physical education and the subsequent ruling by an Employment Tribunal in Norwich that she had been unfairly dismissed should serve as another reminder to employers that age discrimination laws will come into force in October 2006.

Whilst this may seem a long way off, we would advise that within some workplaces, a dramatic culture change will be required and this should begin now. Otherwise, an employer that is forced to admit that there may have been an ageist workplace culture in September 2006 is going to have considerable difficulty convincing an Employment Tribunal that everything suddenly changed by October.

Age is perhaps the final frontier in discrimination law and employers over the years have learned to their cost how long it has taken to change sexist and racist workplace cultures. There are a number of issues which employers should be considering now and these will obviously include amending harassment policies to prohibit ageist bullying and offensive jokes about age. The definition of harassment within the new law will mirror that which is already used in sex and race discrimination. It will therefore cover a range of behaviour from belittling remarks that someone is too young/old to be able to do their job, to birthday cards suggesting that the recipient has reached an age at which they might consider exploring cosmetic treatment or other surgery for say, erectile dysfunction!

There is no doubt that getting age discrimination wrong could be very costly as there will be no upper limit on potential compensation and therefore, highly paid senior executives who are found to have been dismissed for age related reasons and who have difficulty obtaining comparable jobs will mean that employers will be liable for huge awards covering many years of lost income.

We should all bear in mind of course that the law is intended to be age neutral so that younger workers will also be covered. As a starting point, it might be in order for the box for date of birth to be removed from application forms as this arguably suggests that age might be taken into account. Likewise, there should be no more recruitment advertisements seeking "young, dynamic individuals".

Clearly some industries will be more at risk than others and one can think all too readily of media, marketing and public relations businesses which appear to have a disproportionate number of younger and, dare we say, prettier faces.

For information on this or any other employment issues please contact;

Paul Grindley
0113 399 3494
mailto:paulgrindley@keeblehawson.co.uk

Nina Sharpe
0114 2906329
mailto:ninasharpe@keeblehawson.co.uk

Pierre Snowden
0114 2906349
mailto:pierresnowden@keeblehawson.co.uk

Helena Tattersall
0113 399 3482
mailto;helenatattersall@keeblehawson.co.uk
www.keeblehawson.co.uk

© Keeble Hawson. The content of these messages may not be reproduced without our permission.

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Keeble Hawson http://www.keeblehawson.co.uk/

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Keeble Hawson
http://www.keeblehawson.co.uk

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