Rise in levels of ageism cases against employers

AGE is becoming the number one ground for discrimination in complaints made to the Equality Authority about the behaviour of employers.

The authority is investigating 264 complaints made under the Employment Equality Act and about a quarter of them involve older workers who believe they are being treated unfairly because of their age.

“Issues that arise include difficulties getting access to work because of ageist recruitment policies, difficulties staying on in work because of set retirement ages, working conditions and things like voluntary redundancy — either because people are being pushed towards redundancy or because they’re excluded from deals because they’re considered too near retirement,” said authority chief executive Niall Crowley.