Reforming Age Discrimination Law Beyond Individual Enforcement

Age is a critical issue for labour market policy. Both younger and older workers experience significant challenges at work. Despite the introduction of age discrimination laws, ageism remains prevalent. Reforming Age Discrimination Law offers a roadmap for the future development of age discrimination law in common law countries, to better address workplace ageism. Drawing on theoretical, doctrinal, and empirical legal scholarship, and comparative perspectives from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, the book provides a socio-legal critique of existing age discrimination laws and their enforcement and proposes concrete suggestions for legal reform and change. Building on legal and interdisciplinary insights, it examines the challenges and limitations of existing legal frameworks and the individual enforcement model for addressing age discrimination in employment. It also maps the stages of claiming, negotiation, or alternative dispute resolution, and hearing and judgment, using mixed-method case studies of the enforcement of age discrimination law in the United Kingdom and Australia. This volume puts forward a four-fold model of reform which aims to improve the individual enforcement model, strengthen positive equality duties, bolster the roles of statutory equality agencies, and enhance collective enforcement. It goes on to critically consider how these options might address the limits of existing laws, and the practical measures necessary to ensure their success and to move beyond the individual enforcement of age discrimination law.

1 - The Enduring Challenge of Age Discrimination
2 - Towards a Theory of Age Discrimination Law: The Normative Basis for Preventing Age Discrimination
3 - Models for Enforcing Age Discrimination Law
4 - Claiming
5 - Negotiation and Alternative Dispute Resolution
6 - Hearing and Judgment
7 - Positive Duties
8 - Agency Enforcement
9 - Collective Enforcement
10 - Conclusion: Reforming Age Discrimination Law

Dr Alysia Blackham is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. Alysia holds advanced degrees from the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney and Gonville, and Caius College at the University of Cambridge. She has held academic positions in Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, including at Clare College, Cambridge, and as an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher. Prior to entering academia, Alysia worked as an employment law solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney, and advisor to the Senior Executive at the University of Technology, Sydney.