The Rights and Responsibilities of an Employee

The Rights and Responsibilities of an Employee

My co-worker Amina worked with a marketing firm for many years. When she applied to undertake internal training in new information services, her application was denied because management thought she was too old to learn new information technology like Internet and World Wide Web Marketing. Amina was directly discriminated against based on her age. After suing the company, she was compensated with cash and upper management wrote her a formal letter of apology saying, “We regret the incident happened but we will make sure such thing will not happen again.”

After she shared her story with me, I was eager to research about age discrimination because even though most of the time age discrimination occurs to older employees in a work place but young employees such us myself are also considered most of the time as inexperience and incompetent. So that whether you are old or young knowing your rights and responsibilities as an employee is very important in today’s work force.

Age discrimination can also happen in a more indirect way. Sometimes a condition, rule or policy, which seems to be fair and neutral, can actually have a greater negative impact on people of a particular age. For example, a job advertisement specifying that applicants must have 15 years experience would disadvantage young people. Unless this was a reasonable requirement of the job, it would be indirect discrimination and against the law. Every body wants a fair go in life but discrimination means that some people are denied opportunities or are treated badly. This is unfair, unnecessary and against the law. Anti-discrimination legislation makes it easier to every body to get a fair go in life by telling us about our rights and responsibilities as well as establishing process for making a complaint about discrimination and resolving complaints.

“The queensland Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 says that it is against the law to discriminate people because of their age (whether they are young or old). It is also against the law to discriminate against a person on the basis of association with or relation to some one of a particular age. The Act also makes other forms of discrimination and sexual harassment against the law.” (EEOC 1991)

Age discrimination occurs when someone is treated unfairly or badly compared to others because of how old they are. This happens because people have unfair, old-fashioned, stereotypical or prejudiced ideas or beliefs about older people or young people in particular.