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Friday, October 12, 2007

And You Thought It No Longer Matters

By : Bhootied Austin

It is quite simple that is, age is directly proportional to one’s skill and knowledge. Meaning that as a person is chiselled by time and experience, the more he becomes an asset to the working environment he is serving.

Consequently, being an asset to the corporation he is working in, his compensation increases, and benefits increased. The irony is that in the present day and age, this is a misnomer.

Age in the present time is perceived as a disease, slowly creeping up an individual with every year that passes. It serves as a degenerative illness that makes the aged employee weak, and prone to mistakes that would be detrimental to the interest of the company, which at the end of the day is utilized as the proximate reason why an employee is removed from work.

This situation is detrimental to the purpose a working environment which must aim to provide a good life for its employees, particularly those who spent a huge bulk of their lifetime producing for the company. Removing them at this sensitive stage, would be nothing more than adding insult to injury.

Labor is a social economic force, so essential in fact that without it the production process would not be as progressive as it is in the present time.

Hence, the state, with all the pervasive powers vested in it, assumes the responsibility in protecting the same. But despite laws passed protecting the rights and welfare of the working force in society, still the fact that their rights are trumped upon and abused is still a given. An employee who has been removed on the sole basis that he has aged has a cause of action against the employer that did the same. A vested right to file a case for discrimination in the workplace on the basis of age is prevalent in this scenario.

As the case usually is, the employer tries to find any other ground to terminate the services of an employee aside from the fact that he is already old. Reasons ranging from he is not competent to comply with the rigors of work, a sudden complaint of management or customers, or a dismissal on the ground of redundancy or to save on cost.

Yet our experience has it, that these are merely a distraction fro what the proximate cause really is, and that is because of the age of the employee.

origanal author: Atty. Gabriel Cosh

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