Britain's New Age Discrimination Law

To comply with a directive of the European Union, age discrimination in the workplace will become illegal in Great Britain for the first time in October. From the public dithering of recruiters, employers and media there for the past two or three years, you would think they are being required to kill their first-born children.

“Some offices have an old or young culture and companies might seek to recruit people of the same type whom they think would fit in. But unsuccessful applicants may have a case for discrimination.”

- Financial Times, 11 May 2006

And in Great Britain, that will become a serious violation; there is no limit on the damages that can be awarded.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the public discussion surrounding the approach of these new regulations because, unlike the United States where such laws have been on the books for decades, the British are unaccustomed to keeping their age bias under wraps. It’s been amusing to watch the resistance to changing times.

“A survey by the law firm Thomas Eggar found that 74 percent of HR professionals admitted their organization discriminated, consciously or unconsciously, on grounds of age.”

- Financial Times, 11 May 2006

With no case law yet on the books as a guide or test of the feasibility of the new law as it is written, speculation tends toward extreme circumstances:

“Andrea Nicholls, head of employment at Howard Kennedy, a City law firm, says she has come across a couple of incidents in recent weeks that would probably be considered discriminatory after October 1.

“One was a staff handbook that said only staff aged over 25 would be entitled to company cars. The other was a fashion house that wanted to recruit sales staff in an age range equated to that of their customers.”

- Financial Times, 11 May 2006

These two are not unthorny issues. The cost of auto insurance premiums, based on actuarial tables of rates of accidents which are high for young drivers, could be prohibitive for some employers. And I doubt 20-something fashionistas would be thrilled to find me, at 65, suggesting just the right belly-baring breast cover for their next club outing.

The trick, in all anti-discriminatory law, is to find a balance but the law, for all its intricate detail, isn’t designed for common sense. A person’s gender, skin color or religion is obviously inconsequential to cost control and job performance. But as just these two examples show, that isn’t always so with age.

Still, some employment practices are blatantly age discriminatory.

“…specifying ideal candidates’ ages in job advertisements, or even using age-loaded words such as ‘youthful’, ‘dynamic’ or ‘mature’ could land an employer in trouble.”

- Financial Times, 11 May 2006

As well it should, but even here in the U.S., with laws in force, those words regularly show up in job listings.

One difficulty with mandating anti-discrimination in age is that people age at dramatically different rates and times in their lives. In some cases, a 50-year-old may already be in cognitive decline while in others, an 80-year-old can be as mentally sharp as ever. It is not as predictable as adolescent maturation. That makes it difficult to measure and hard to enforce, but it must not be an excuse for continued age discrimination.

The larger issue, however – in the United States and Great Britain – is that ageism is not taken as seriously as other discriminatory practices. As the Financial Times story notes, “…age tends to be a jokey subject in the office.” And, I would add, just about everywhere else too.

The reasonably questionable situations of the two examples above notwithstanding, age discrimination in the workplace is insupportable, but it will remain at issue until the cultural bias against elders in general becomes as unacceptable as racism. New laws can help change those attitudes as the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965 have done, over time, in the U.S., but they are not the entire solution.

What is important about the October directive in Great Britain is that it shines a bright light on a shameful practice and the media discussion cannot help but begin to change attitudes.