With effect from October 1, 2011, any employee who is forced to retire is going to be able to make an unfair dismissal compensation or age discrimination claim. To avoid a successful age discrimination employment tribunal claim, any employer must be able to objectively justify any decision to retire an employee.
At the moment, employers may still be able to insist on “a normal” default age of retirement – and provided that proper procedures are followed, enforce retirement at or over the age of 65 – provided, however, that any notice required under this procedure was given by April 1.
Our employment lawyers therefore advise that extreme caution is taken in dealing with retiring workers – we suspect that the number of discrimination claims made to the employment tribunal is going to rocket in the next couple of years.
As an employer I also wonder what the obsession is with retiring people at 65. We have a couple of senior lawyers over the age of 65 whose performance is frankly excellent. In purely business terms, surely the issue is the ability to do the job and how good their performance is – rather than their age. I wouldn’t want to swap my 69-year-old lawyer for an 18-year-old!
Whether you are an employee or employer, for specialist advice on age discrimination contact our team on 01722 422300 today.