Prohibiting Age Discrimination in Getting Equal Employment Opportunities
Virtually all industrialized countries have enacted legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment or occupation on the basis of race, religion, sex and various other grounds. Very few have laws banning age discrimination.
Among those that do, the United States has the best-established legislation. Age discrimination laws have been adopted at the federal level and by most states. The principal federal legislation is the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, adopted in 1967. Specifically aimed at protecting workers over 40 years of age, this Act prohibits discrimination in recruitment, termination and most other aspects of employment. Only very limited exceptions and exemptions are admitted and the criteria for certain of these, notably the exception for jobs where age is a bonafide occupational qualification, are interpreted narrowly. One of the most important effects of this Law has been to make mandatory retirement ages generally unlawful.
Other countries that have age discrimination laws, some adopted quite recently, are Australia at the state and territorial level (federal legislation has been proposed but not yet adopted; however, the majority of workers come under jurisdictions which do have such laws), Canada (with some variations in legal provisions among jurisdictions), Finland, Ireland and New Zealand.
A few more countries have laws offering some protection to older workers, particularly against dismissal, but this tends to be very limited. It should not be forgotten, though, that labor law provisions in many countries provide both substantive and procedural safeguards concerning termination of employment to workers in general.
An important development in late 2000 was the promulgation by the European Union of a major directive on discrimination, which includes age among several other grounds not previously covered by EU texts. 10 Under its impulsion, member countries of the European Union that have not already done so may well adopt legislation banning discrimination based on age and some other grounds over the next five years. Comprehensive draft legislation on age discrimination in employment has been discussed by the Senate and the National Assembly in France and could be adopted in the near future.
At present, however, most countries do not provide legal protection against age discrimination. Even its most overt manifestations are commonplace. A newspaper in France contains a job advertisement for an executive secretary specifying an ideal age of 28; another in Japan for a wine consultant aged 22-28; one in Spain for flight attendants aged between 21 and 29 or 32 if experienced; an advertisement for a watch company in Switzerland seeks an assistant in purchasing aged 25-40; and one for a European office of a world-famous computer company based in the United States, “young” engineers.
Advertisements like these, which would be illegal in, for example, the United States, may be found in many countries. Job application forms systematically ask for date of birth. Employment agencies and referral services routinely indicate age limits or preferences. Age criteria are applied to decisions on training, work assignments and promotion. When restructuring or downsizing, enterprises systematically and explicitly target older people for separation.