Mr Savage said.
Virgin Blue's assessors (or job interviewers) were "comparitively young" and identified "with persons of the same age and experience as the assessors,
I saw this happening in the London financial district in the late 1980s. I was in my early 30s then and peer group department managers who were in their late 20s never hired anyone closer to them in age than two years and NEVER older than themself. On one occasion I hired a technician who was 20 years older than me. He later told me that, when first meeting me and seeing my age relative to his, he assumed that he would not get the job.
Once I was over 40, work in telecommunications (IT) became scarce until I found that any application for contract work was ignored. Had I become less skilled? Had I forgotten everything from the past 20 years? So I left that game. Why did I not sue? Tell me how easy it is for one person to sue ten different companies?
There was an interesting experiment documented recently in the UK. A group of MBA students in London were asked to short list possible candidates from a list of recruits. The post was for a PA to a CEO. This was an exercise and all of the CVs were made up - save for one genuine one who had ALL the qualifications and experience required from the job description. She was not shortlisted and she was in her early 50s. Later, the students were faced by this fact and by the woman herself. Many of them admitted that they thought she would be 'past it' as she was old enough to be their mother.
easternboy [speaking about Richard Branson]:
Maybe its time for his son to take over as the figure head of the Virgin group as he is more the age that projects youth not some old man with bad teeth that are just way to white.
Well, there is more evidence of age bias! You have made a judgement about a man based on publicity photographs and decided that he is biased in favour of young people and so his younger son must take over. Is that because his son would favour older people? I shall restrain myself from making further personal comment.
If you recall the judgment in this case was that
... assessors were "comparitively young" and identified "with persons of the same age and experience as the assessors" That is the root of the problem that I have seen for over 15 years.
So, easternboy, the problem is NOT some edict sent from on high but the fact that companies give responsibility for hiring to people who are very much younger than folks in similar positions 20 or 30 years ago. These 20 somethings are predisposed to hireing people that they can identify with in their age group. Accordingly, they are exhibiting gender bias for which they have been correctly punished. It is only by brave people taking on companies in this way, that we can teach companies that hiring lots of young people for less money - to hire more young people for less money - is not always in the best interests of the company and its customers.
My sympathies to those who were discriminated against. I have had no opportunity to sue those who have done so and have experiened enromous financial loss as a result. [see above] Thanks for standing up where you could.