Age

What is age discrimination?

Age discrimination is when a person is treated less favourably than another at work by your employer or other employees, because of your age.

 

Overview of age discrimination

The Equality Act 2010 (TEA 2010) prohibits discrimination against age. Discrimination based on age is known as ageism.

 

How does age discrimination happen?

A person can be discriminated against based on their age in different ways including during the recruitment process. The employer should clearly explain the level of professional qualification and experience, not just age alone. Employers should not assume what training a person can or cannot undertake based on their age. This means that they cannot take for granted a person’s career ambitions because of their age or work experience, nor they should underestimate them because of these reasons.

 

An employer should not decide or suggest when an employee should stop working, meaning that they cannot ask someone to retire because of their age. The Equality Act and the pension scheme are the legislation that is used when deciding to stop working. Even if a person is of pensionable age they may continue to work if they so choose.

 

A Company can legally base its redundancy policy according to the length of time someone has worked for them. Also, the Employer shall pay according to their National Living Wage, which can differ based on the employee’s age. Pay can be withheld only if there is a clear clause in the employment contract that allows so.

 

How to claim age discrimination

It is always better to informally talk to your manager and if that does not work, the best thing to do would be to write a formal complaint to the HR department.

 

How we can help

We would be delighted to act on your behalf to negotiate whether there has, in our experts opinion, been any discrimination made against you or your employment application, To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link.

 

Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.

Your legal team will carefully examine the employers policies/procedures on the matter and if there is an identified issue, we would seek to assist you in bringing about a fair solution by mediating between yourself and your employer. If a solution cannot be found then we would support you in lodging a claim via an employment tribunal. You should be conscious of the strict time constraints as discrimination claims must be brought to an Employment Tribunal within three months of the alleged discriminatory act. We do tend to find that employers tend to be significantly more responsive when you have taken steps to obtain professional legal advice.