Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Extending Working Life for Older Workers: Age Discrimination Law Policy and Practice by Alysia Blackham
The UK population is ageing rapidly. While age discrimination laws are seen as having broad potential to address the ageing ‘challenge’ in employment and to achieve instrumental and intrinsic objectives it is unclear what impact they are having in practice. This book therefore addresses two overarching questions in the field of employment: How are UK age discrimination laws operating in practice? And how if at all could UK age discrimination laws be improved? A reflexive law theoretical standpoint is employed to investigate these issues applying a mixed methods research design that engages qualitative quantitative doctrinal and comparative elements. The book demonstrates the substantial limitations of the Equality Act 2010 for achieving instrumental and intrinsic objectives in the context of age discrimination. Drawing on qualitative expert interviews statistical analysis and organisational case studies it illustrates the failure of age discrimination laws to achieve attitudinal change in the UK and reveals the limited prevalence of proactive measures to support older workers. Integrating doctrinal analysis comparative analysis of the law in Finland and the Delphi method it proposes targeted legal and policy changes to address demographic change and offers an agenda for reform to increase the impact of age discrimination laws to enable law to respond effectively to demographic ageing.