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UK: Age discrimination to be outlawed
BBC
NEWS, July 2, 2003
UK
- The plans for tackling age discrimination, which stem from a European
Union directive, will mark the biggest change in employment law for a
generation. Employers
are set to be banned from enforcing a retirement age below 70. The
new proposals are also designed to outlaw ageist advertising and workplace
practices. Under
the new rules employers would not be allowed to stipulate the required
ages for a job or to tell older employees they did not qualify for
training schemes. The
legislation could see many more people working on into their sixties. Currently
employers can set compulsory retirement ages for staff. But
under the new plans that would not be allowed and they would have to allow
people to work until they were 70. The
government believes that unfair age discrimination costs the economy
billions of pounds - as much as £16bn a year - and stops people realising
their true potential. Ms
Hewitt condemned ageism as the "last bastion" of discrimination.
She
told the BBC: "We have got to get away from a situation where
hundreds of thousands of people are forced out of employment usually
against their will, in their fifties - sometimes in their late forties
...and then find they can't even get an interview, they can't even get a
job." Ms
Hewitt said more and more people wanted to combine work and family life. "This
is not about forcing people to work until they are 70, but this is about
giving people much more choice," she said. Employers'
fear
John
Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI, said employers recognised
that age discrimination was unacceptable, but warned it could prove tricky
to outlaw. "Much
more than any previous discrimination law, age discrimination is
particularly difficult to define." Mr
Cridland warned there was a real risk of an "explosion" of
employment tribunals if workers took up any new right to challenge
employers if they felt they had been discriminated against because of
their age. "Employers
need to be clear, whether at recruitment or retirement, they can take
common-sense decisions that are inside the law." The measures being suggested by the government would bring the UK into line with European Union employment law. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
