Age discrimination happens all too often in the workplace. The bad thing is that most of the time when it happens to someone they think it was just their time to go – they have no idea their boss just let them go or fired them because of their age!

What Is Ageism?

When talking about age discrimination, you’ll often hear the term ageism. This deals with stereotyping a person, based off of their age. Because ageism is a characteristic based off of discrimination laws, employers are not allowed to hire, promote, fire or base their wages on a persons age.

Examples Of Illegal Age Discrimination

It can sometimes be hard to tell when age discrimination happens. But for some people over the age of 40, there is an act called the Age Discrimination in Employment Act or ADEA. This act protects people that are 40 years of age and over that have had discrimination happen to them because of their age.

Here are some examples of age discrimination in the workplace:

• You didn’t get a job or a promotion because the employer wanted someone younger looking.

• You were fired from your job because the boss wanted to keep younger workers on who he/she could pay a lower wage to.

• You were passed over for a promotion because the boss wanted to hire someone younger outside of the company and said that he/she did so because they needed new blood for the workplace.

• The company went through a phase of layoffs in which most of the people that were laid off were older people and many of the employees who got to keep their jobs were younger yet had less job experience.

• Before you were let go or fired your boss made a remark about your age ie; you are over the hill, you are too old, you are ancient, you’ve been around since dinosaurs walked around!

If any of these issues have happened to you, you might have been a victim of age discrimination.

Stipulations Of The ADEA

While the ADEA is a nice law to have it does not work with every business and every individual. The only employees that the act specifically protects are companies that have over 20 employees. It also does not protect independent contractors.

So if you work for a small business or you work as a freelancer, the ADEA will not be able to protect you if you are a victim of age discrimination.

Valid Reasons For Firing An Elderly Worker

According to the ADEA, an employer needs a valid reason to let an older employee go – it absolutely cannot be related to their age. It can, however, be related to something like poor work performance.

For example, if an employee is older and works at a grocery store as a stocker and can no longer stock the shelves – this would be a valid reason to let the person go.

What To Do If You Have Been Discriminated Against

If you you have been involved in age discrimination and live in California, you can file a discrimination claim to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH).

You can also place a claim for age discrimination with the federal administrative agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

These two organizations work together on processing claims – so if you contact one or the other, both will be involved in your claim.

You can contact the DFEH here. You need to contact the HQ hotline to set up an appointment.

You can also contact the EEOC here. You also need to contact one of the 6 offices and set up an appointment.

 

 

 

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