Chris BallLast week, on 1 October, was Older People’s Day in the UK and the UN International Day of Older Persons. However, age discrimination continues to be a problem in our country so in this post we’re going to look at the discrimination issues still facing older people, particularly the long-term unemployed.
We shouldn’t need to be signing petitions on this issue but we do. In fact age discrimination may be the last bastion of widespread and endemic prejudice – despite it being unlawful.
It must be admitted the law against age discrimination has been a stop-start affair since the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations were introduced in 2006 in a way that allowed employers to routinely sack people at the age of 65 – the “default retirement age” as it was called. Sadly, even though forced retirement has been now made unlawful too, it remains the case that ambivalent attitudes to age reign supreme.
