As time has gone by, the age of retirement has steadily increased. This has unfortunately led to an event known as “age discrimination”. Age discrimination, as the name implies, is where a person is denied a job position solely due to their age. Similarly, age discrimination can also include purposely being asked to perform unpleasant tasks or being exposed to rude comments that are strictly about a person’s age.
While not quite to the same degree as racial discrimination, gender discrimination, or discrimination based on sexual orientation, age-based discrimination can be incredibly harmful to one’s career and overall mental state of being. Below are some ways for you to learn if you have suffered age discrimination in the workplace as well as what your options are.
#1. Your Job Has A History Of Hiring & Firing Practices
The most immediate and obvious examples of age discrimination are in the hiring and firing practices employed by the job itself. This is especially true if you’ve been fired or not hired. It may be difficult, but reviewing the company’s older employees can potentially paint a fairly bad picture as well as show a trend in their history.
#2. You Often Hear Comments About Your Age In The Workplace
Next includes the outright comments levied against you while in the workplace. While jokes now and again, while still inexcusable, can be chalked up to a lack of forethought on the speaker’s end, continually hearing these comments at a targeted and near nonstop level is something else entirely. The name-calling and subtle insults are often performed by people along the west coast, so be careful.
#3. You Continually Get “Unpleasant” Jobs
Again, a business can assign whomever they want to whatever job they want. It is an open market and they have that freedom. However, while this is true, when coupled with the aforementioned signs, it can further feed into a potential narrative that you are only being asked to perform these tasks because of your age.
#4. Your Performance Reviews Suddenly Suffer
Finally, if you are suddenly and “out of nowhere” suffering from poor performance reviews, despite a fairly consistent performance year-over-year, you can understand what sort of picture is being set and what sort of groundwork is being laid against you. Again, if your performance has been the same yet you are suffering more reports against you, it may be to sell a narrative that you are more problematic than they want.
What Can You Do?
It can often be frustrating to know that there is a concerted effort against you and not know what resources you have available. The solution is to look into an employee rights attorney, specifically one that focuses on age-based discrimination. As an example, part of the Employee Rights Attorney Group, they have an attorney trained in legal help during age-based discrimination. As such, if you are on the west coast, having a skilled age discrimination attorney in Los Angeles is very important as they are local to you while also able to quickly and easily determine the honesty from the more cruel antics of your employer and superior.