Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes: a curious age discrimination case
Posted on 23rd August 2024 at 13:26
“Age UK found guilty of age discrimination”, proclaims the newspaper headline. “Age UK, which describes itself as ‘the leading charity for older people’, has now been ordered… to pay £4,316 in compensation…” Let us leave aside the fact that no one can be found guilty in an employment tribunal. What really happened? Strange as it may sound, it was not the original act, it was the cover up…
Alexander Cubbin, a disabled person, applied for a brand asset designer role at Age UK, who should have invited him to an interview under the Disability Confidence Scheme, provided that he met the criteria. His application was somehow lost during its internal forwarding to the hiring managers, as a result of technological error. He was not invited for interview, and received a generic response that referred to “careful consideration” and “skill sets more closely matched to the role requirements”.
Mr Cubbin complained. Age UK could have apologised profusely for their systems failure, and left it at that. Instead, they set about producing a hindsight driven assessment of his application. It included the observation: “the standard of his layout and typographical skills are not reflective of 40 years’ experience.”
This led Mr Cubbin to issue a tribunal claim, alleging that the review comprised harassment related to his age and disability and an act of victimisation. There were 9 liability issues in play, reduced to 4 during the course of a hearing that took up 3 days’ worth of initial trial time followed by 3 further days for deliberation and judgment. All of the claims failed, save for the age related harassment claim. Mr Cubbin was awarded £4,316 for injury to feelings.
How did this comprise harassment? It was deemed to be unwanted conduct. It was found to relate to age: had the review been phrased along the lines of “not reflective of his professed experience”, as opposed to “40 years’ experience”, it might not have been so found. And it was accepted that the review had violated Mr Cubbin’s dignity, regardless of the small readership in practice: the tribunal decided that he did find it “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive”. No matter that the review was never intended to be read by him – he had a legal cause of action, and he used it to his advantage.
What lessons are to be learned? Age UK could of course have chosen not to try to lock the stable door after the horse had bolted, as the tribunal observed. More to the point, if it had sought external advice about edits to the review, or indeed as to whether it was a good idea to send it at all, it might have saved itself £4,316 in compensation, more than that in legal costs and wasted time, and the embarrassment of a newspaper headline that invoked, definitely not for the first time, Juvenal’s “who will watch the watchmen?”
Do you sense an age discrimination claim brewing? Looking for help in deflecting it, or nipping it in the bud? Let us know. Contact David Cooper on 0121 325 5402 or via dmc@coxcooper.co.uk .
Tagged as: age discrimination, age related harassment, injured feelings, unwanted conduct, victimisation, violation of dignity
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