The effect of these regulations are going to be very wide ranging, much more than many employers now realise. Not only older workers will fall under the protection of the law, but younger workers also.
Unless employers are able to bring about significant changes in the way workers are treated, there will most likely be great scope for workers to complain.
Amongst the manifold areas affected by the legislation are recruitment (judging applicants on length of experience will be discriminatory as younger workers will obviously be disadvantaged by this requirement),terms and conditions of work, training for older workers (there should be an end of comments such as, 'he's too old to learn new methods,and anyway it's not worth it 'cos he'll be retiring soon'), retirement (there is now going to be a statutory retirement procedure, with the worker able to request from his employer to work beyond the statutory retirement age), notice of termination based on length of service, and retirement procedure.
As with previous discrimination legislation, where wide ranging changes were made to the discriminatory culture at work, so will be the case with this legislation. E.g. as with racist and sexist 'jokes', toleration of agist 'jokes' and the teasing of younger or older workers about their age will now be subject to risk on the part of the employer.
Because so many workers will be covered by the Age Regulations, which have removed the age bar to claiming unfair dismissal, it is expected that unlike with the case of the religion and sexual orientation discrimination legislation that came into effect in December 2003, there will be many claims brought by those affected. Some experts predict that there will be a flood of claims filed with the employment tribunal soon after the Regulations come into force on 1st October 2006.
© Workrep 25/8/2006