Reforming Age Discrimination Law

Book excerpt: Age is a critical issue for labour market policy. Both younger and older workers experience significant challenges at work. Despite the introduction of age discrimination laws, ageism remains prevalent. Reforming Age Discrimination Law offers a roadmap for the future development of age discrimination law in common law countries, to better address workplace ageism. Drawing on theoretical, doctrinal, and empirical legal scholarship, and comparative perspectives from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, the book provides a socio-legal critique of existing age discrimination laws and their enforcement and proposes concrete suggestions for legal reform and change. Building on legal and interdisciplinary insights, it examines the challenges and limitations of existing legal frameworks and the individual enforcement model for addressing age discrimination in employment. It also maps the stages of claiming, negotiation, or alternative dispute resolution, and hearing and judgment, using mixed-method case studies of the enforcement of age discrimination law in the United Kingdom and Australia. This volume puts forward a four-fold model of reform which aims to improve the individual enforcement model, strengthen positive equality duties, bolster the roles of statutory equality agencies, and enhance collective enforcement. It goes on to critically consider how these options might address the limits of existing laws, and the practical measures necessary to ensure their success and to move beyond the individual enforcement of age discrimination law.