Discrimination Against Older Workers During The Labor...

Discrimination against older workers is one of the forbidden grounds of discrimination in the labour market across Canada. Age discrimination affects an older adult’s career, advancements, opportunities, and privileges in the labour market. Furthermore, older adults tend to be marginalized, institutionalized, and stripped of responsibility, power, and their dignity (Nelson 208). The Canadian population is aging rapidly and that changes in the population age structure have led to considerable discussion of ageism and social policies like mandatory retirement and old age security. Employers continue to have negative attitudes and stigma toward older workers (Klassen and Gillin 36). Social policy like mandatory retirement is the leading form†¦show more content†¦Mandatory retirement refers to an organization of the labor market that requires employees to withdraw their services at an arbitrary age and age discrimination refers to social behavior in which age categories a re used for the basis of a variety of employment decisions like hiring, promoting, and firing employees (Gillin and Klassen 87). Furthermore, this article examines the health issues and poverty in the older population, and the evolution of social policies, like mandatory retirement and old age security, in Canada. Mandatory retirement has a long history in the Canadian labour market system. Retirement is a social institution which emerged in the industrialized revolution during the beginning of the 20th century (McDonald 2). The social policy was developed along with the introduction of private and public pension plans (McDaniel and Um 75). Until recently, mandatory retirement was allowed in all of Canada jurisdictions except for Manitoba and Quebec (Gomez and Gunderson 2). Mandatory retirement was most prominent for males and persons with higher education, better health, full-time work, lived in urban locations and has higher income (Gomez and Gunderson 4). Maximum age limits are u sed by employers to institute mandatory retirement policies and the maximum age limits are used by employers to govern mandatory retirement policies. These limits have been challenged under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which applies to all