OUT WITH THE OLD? Age Discrimination at work
Age Discrimination is still Illegal yet Prevalent
In order to protect the interests of every employee and safeguard their rights, many countries have enacted laws and regulations which seek to prohibit age discrimination at workplace, however despite being declared as an illegal act, it is not uncommon to find such practices in various parts of the world as per the experiences narrated by majority of laborers. To curtail such discriminatory practice the Federal Age discrimination in Employment Act has devised stipulation to protect employees who are more than forty years old. As per the act it has been clearly stated as follows:
It shall be unlawful for an employer-
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age;
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s age; or
(3) to reduce the wage rate of any employee in order to comply with this chapter.
However it must be also borne in mind that many other factors come into play while dismissing staff and if someone aged above 40 has been parted of from the company it doesn’t automatically imply that it was a case of discrimination .Under most of the layoff scenarios one of the major element happens to be that of a pay scale. During times when companies struggle to sustain their earnings, it propels them to cut off their costs by getting rid of high salaried staff. It’s an established phenomenon that salary and wage is directly proportional to the amount of experience an employed possess and this in itself is also directly correlated with number of years spent in a particular field.
Care must be exercised by organizations in the due process of laying-off staff.
Amongst the most prevalent type of violation, the practice of promoting someone on the basis of their age has been observed on a regular basis. In such cases, the candidate chosen to be rewarded is much younger and less experienced then his counterpart which is a glaring example of age discrimination.
We know about the inherent difficulties which exists in interpreting labor laws ,therefore if you have undergone through such testing times and have any queries regarding your rights, then you can address all such issues by availing services of San Francisco Labor law attorney who will guide you in assessing your rights and under some instances may even do it without demanding any fee for it .
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