Howard Levitt: Ageism is alive and well in Canadian workplaces

financialpost.com:

By Howard Levitt and Madelena Viksne

U.S. President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race is now old news. What is not old news is ageism in Canadian workplaces.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about Canada’s prohibition on mandatory retirement age policies and the human rights protections against workplace age discrimination.

Despite all of these protections, subtle and overt pressure is often placed on older employees to encourage their retirement. Age discrimination is still alive and well in workplaces across the country.

What happens when an employer takes more subtle steps to push an employee toward retirement?

While, it may not be blatantly clear that such conduct is, in fact, in breach of human rights legislation in the same way that a written mandated retirement policy is, realistically, the effect is the same and, in practice, quite common.

The pressure to retire can include things like:

The reality is, if your employer wants you gone, they can always terminate your employment – there is no way to pre-empt a termination without cause. What your employer cannot do, however, is tell you that you have to retire by a certain date or age or exert undue pressure on you to do so earlier than you had planned.

Whether well-meaning or not, employers must be aware that even this more subtle pressure or changes to an employee’s working conditions can, and likely will, establish age discrimination contrary to human rights legislation.

Employers must also be wary of the fact that, quite frankly, employees are far better informed of their rights than they have been in the past. There are several reasons for this, including increased access to information and ubiquitous legal advertising advising employees of their rights