Howard Levitt: Ageism is alive and effectively in Canadian workplaces

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By Howard Levitt and Madelena Viksne

U.S. President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race is now outdated information. What shouldn’t be outdated information is ageism in Canadian workplaces.

A couple of weeks in the past, we wrote about Canada’s prohibition on necessary retirement age insurance policies and the human rights protections in opposition to office age discrimination.

Regardless of all of those protections, delicate and overt strain is commonly positioned on older workers to encourage their retirement. Age discrimination remains to be alive and effectively in workplaces throughout the nation.

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What occurs when an employer takes extra delicate steps to push an worker towards retirement?

Whereas, it is probably not blatantly clear that such conduct is, in reality, in breach of human rights laws in the identical approach {that a} written mandated retirement coverage is, realistically, the impact is identical and, in observe, fairly widespread.

The strain to retire can embrace issues like:

• Seemingly innocuous questions on what your retirement plans are – which you wouldn’t have to reply;
• Unilateral reductions in your hours, duties or authority absent any request or consent from you – which you wouldn’t have to just accept or consent to;
• Reorganizations the place solely or disproportionately older workers appear to be affected;
  Frequent feedback about your age or retirement in passing – which we’d advocate conserving notes of, together with who mentioned it, when and what was mentioned;
• Layoffs the place solely older workers are laid off work;
• Outright requests that you simply retire out of your function or settle for a demotion – which you aren’t obligated to do;
• Elevated and unfair scrutiny of you’re employed together with destructive efficiency evaluations when you may have had no historical past of identical – which you’ll problem; and,
• More and more hostile and poisonous office conduct geared toward making you’re feeling you’re not needed within the office – which once more, we advocate conserving notes of.

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The truth is, in case your employer needs you gone, they’ll all the time terminate your employment – there isn’t a option to pre-empt a termination with out trigger. What your employer can not do, nonetheless, is inform you that it’s important to retire by a sure date or age or exert undue strain on you to take action sooner than you had deliberate.

Whether or not well-meaning or not, employers should be conscious that even this extra delicate strain or modifications to an worker’s working situations can, and sure will, set up age discrimination opposite to human rights laws.

Employers should even be cautious of the truth that, fairly frankly, workers are much better knowledgeable of their rights than they’ve been up to now. There are a number of causes for this, together with elevated entry to info and ubiquitous authorized promoting advising workers of their rights — typically to the purpose of exaggerating these rights within the hope of attracting shoppers.

We incessantly get calls from older workers who declare some or all the above behaviours are current, or who had been terminated and really feel they had been targetted on account of their superior age.

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Employers can be good to behave in a way the place such allegations lack any significant basis. Ageism, if established by the worker in court docket, will enhance the employer’s liabilities significantly because the employer is uncovered to not solely human rights damages but in addition the potential for an award of extraordinary damages such unhealthy religion, ethical and punitive damages.

Staff, for his or her half, ought to relay any issues about age discrimination with counsel to debate subsequent steps earlier than going to your employer or human assets division. There are numerous doable avenues for redress relying upon the employer, the act, and your personal state of affairs.

Howard Levitt is senior accomplice of Levitt LLP, employment and labour legal professionals with places of work in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment legislation in eight provinces and is the writer of six books, together with the Regulation of Dismissal in Canada. Madelena Viksne is a senior affiliate on the agency.

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