Age discrimination,and the challenge of the removal of the default retirement age in unfair dismissal law.

Jonathan Hearn, Legal Director, of the employment law team of DLA Piper UK LLP

Jonathan specialises in advising employers, and senior employees, on all aspects of employment law. Contentious work includes Employment Tribunal defence, particularly in age and disability discrimination, disputes around permanent health insurance, advising on litigation strategy, dealing with industrial relations claims and methods of resolving disputes.

In non-contentious work, Jonathan has a particular specialism in advising on outsourcing, TUPE, contract variation and employee consultation. Other non-contentious work includes drawing-up terms and conditions, and advising on HR strategy, often through leading in-house training programmes. Jonathan devises and presents numerous one-day training courses on all aspects of employment law to individual client corporations, including employers in the construction, retail, leisure, hotel, professional services, IT, rail, banking, manufacturing, training and public sectors. Jonathan has developed and led the employment law module on the UK and international MBA courses of Ashridge Management College, and speaks on employment law issues on TV and radio, including the Today Programme and BBC TV news.

Jonathan is one of two members of DLA Piper's London Employment team who are recommended by Legal 500.

Age discrimination and the challenge of the removal of the default retirement age in unfair dismissal law

The session will cover:

• The new law on 'unfair dismissal', now that retirement will rarely be permitted
• The transitional provisions
• How can you still objectively justify a retirement, within age discrimination law? Including guidance from caselaw.
• The greater risk of age discrimination, as managers deal with an older workforce
• The impact of other discrimination laws, particularly disability discrimination, if we have an older workforce
• Progressing and building towards a possible dismissal on grounds of capability, conduct, redundancy or 'some other substantial reason' - in cases where you would previously have waited for the employee to reach retirement age
• Implications of changing the workplace culture
• Will you seek to use a retirement age for your business?
• Some benefits become much more expensive or discriminatory
  
  • Can we justify denying them to older staff, to keep the cost down?
  • Can we remove benefits without breaching employees' contracts?
  • Establishing new benefits structures, to address the fact that the workforce has no upper age
  • Such as new terms for employee share schemes
• Interplay with pension arrangements
• Voluntary redundancy as a tactic
• Greater use of fixed term contracts?
• Greater use of agency workers?

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