Parliament recently passed legislation that may affect the way in which graduate recruiting firms connect university graduates with jobs. Effective on October 1, 2007, recruiting firms will be prohibited from facilitating recruitment programs that only accept first-time professionals, typically university graduates, for employment. These graduate recruiting, training, and placement programs will need to be age neutral and available to employees of all experience levels.
With the new anti-age discrimination laws, Parliament has forced companies to recognize the age bias that they have inherent in many of their programs. Hiring managers and executives have been quick to realize that they are catering to a young group of professionals. A majority of companies recognize that they have age bias as part of their hiring practices. Many times, this bias is based on a hiring company's desire to choose young professionals fresh out of university over more experienced and higher paid professionals already established in their industry. Nearly as many companies recognize that they use images of professionals under the age of 25 in their advertisements and commercials. In the United Kingdom over the last few years, three quarters of recruits of graduate recruitment firms were under the age of 25.
While the new anti-age discrimination legislation has opened the eyes of recruiters to issues of age bias, there is no need for panic.Many analysts, graduate recruiters, and others in the industry understand that the age of recruits is a poor indicator of long term job performance. As such, members of Parliament were careful not to make the legislation too overreaching as to harm the graduate recruiting industry. Indeed, graduates and young professionals under the age of 25 are desired in fields like advertising, information technology, and certain areas of sales because of their knowledge of the newest trends. For graduate recruiters planning their recruiting campaigns for Summer and Fall 2007, they will need to heed the law while recognizing the different needs of their hiring companies.
This new legislation may in fact benefit everyone involved. Between 1999 and 2003, older adults attending university increased by 20 percent in the United Kingdom. While many companies may want to keep costs down by bringing in young professionals, the benefits of bringing both young and older graduates up through training programs are plentiful. While age divides may be problematic to start, graduates of university share a comradery due to a shared experience. The new anti-age discrimination laws should help bring in talented older professionals while maintaining connections to the traditional university age crowd.
The thought that “All Men are Created Equal" was one of the founding building blocks of this great country. Unfortunately, it is historically correct to say that we have not always lived up to that concept or ideal. But we are known as a Society that tries to correct any mistakes it makes. Perhaps it is time to correct this issue in the Discrimination Laws?
The anti discrimination law of 1964, has become the foundation upon which we to this day judge whether discrimination has or has not occurred. Within that law, the applicability of that law is limited to “protected classes of persons". The classes of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin were the original Protected Classes with Age, and disabilities being subsequently added.
I wish to propose that the “landscape" has changed greatly since 1964. We are speaking specifically of the landscape or reality of employment in 1964, where white, male, prostestant Euro-Americans dominated the management ranks. Is that true today? Certainly the landscape of management is much less well defined.
We have managers today of every race, every color, every religion, every sex, and every national origin, and yes of all ages and ability levels. As discrimination is a function of mostly management misuse of powers, and as managers come in all the different classes of persons, why then aren’t the laws updated to include “all persons" including we who find ourselves to be white, male, protestant Americans.
With 85% if cases being against females, and 15% against males, the fact is that 15% of the known victims of sexual harassment, are not covered under the discrimination laws, unless they happen to be persons of color, or perhaps older in age, or not from Euro-American lineage. And in each of those cases, they would have to prove it was “because" of the color, age or lineage that this discrimination occurred.
So I ask the question again: Why are we not ALL covered under the Discrimination Laws?
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