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Are Older Workers Past Their Sell‐by‐Date? A View from UK Age Discrimination Law
Author(s) -
Dewhurst Elaine
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the modern law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1468-2230
pISSN - 0026-7961
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2230.12113
Subject(s) - age discrimination , accounts payable , certainty , compensation (psychology) , law , legal certainty , perception , actuarial science , political science , economics , psychology , social psychology , payment , finance , philosophy , epistemology , neuroscience
This article assesses the effectiveness of U nited K ingdom age discrimination law in protecting older workers from claims that they are less productive and perform more poorly than younger workers. The article assesses employer perceptions and the incompatibility of such perceptions with existing research and the current interpretation of age discrimination law by the CJEU and the S upreme C ourt which accords with such research. The effectiveness of age discrimination law in practice is assessed through an analysis of existing compensation reduction rules. The article concludes that the existing rules which allow for a reduction in compensation payable where there is a chance that the same outcome would have been reached in the absence of discrimination (the ‘chance model’) reduces the effectiveness of the existing protections. A move to a ‘certainty model’ would be less speculative, would serve the objectives of anti‐discrimination law and would reduce concerns about compatibility with EU law.