Below is a guest employment (discrimination law) blog post regarding a recent successful age discrimination claim.
A man who worked as engineer from Whittlesey has successfully won an age discrimination compensation claim described by experts as a ‘landmark’ case. The ex-employee of local engineering company, R&R Plant Hire, told Michael Bailey, to retire when he hit his 65th birthday. The verdict was reached at London’s Court of Appeal. Mr Bailey was awarded £4,555 in the compensation claim case after Judge Simon Richardson ruled in favour of unfair dismissal. The compensation claim stated that at the time of the dismissal, Mr Bailey wished to continue working for the company.
After the verdict was reached, R&R Plant hire attempted to overturn the ruling. However, the Court of Appeal decided to uphold the verdict, a decision which saw the company being forced to pay a further sum of compensation money totalling over £10,000 in order to cover legal expenses incurred defending the appeal.
The ruling could open the gates for thousands of seniors all across the United Kingdom to stay in employment rather than being forced into an early retirement. Any employer found to be in violation of such a desire by an employee would have to face a potential compensation claim against them. The adviser for policy on employment and skills at organisation Age UK, Christopher Brooks, welcomed the verdict of the Court of Appeal, stating that it’s both wrong and illegal to discriminate against people in this way. He went on to say that ‘Age UK believes older workers should be allowed to choose when to retire’, despite the reality that they often find themselves shut out of the job market when hitting a certain age.
The Court of Appeal was presented with a letter from R&R Plant Hire stating that Mr Bailey would be ‘required to retire’ when his 65th birthday came round. However, Judge Dame Janet Smith, another judge on the panel, stated that the letter failed to fall within the required parameters of exercising such an action.