At the risk of being accused of being guilty of thread-creep (nothing new there) I don't think the "ageism" law due to come into force on 1st November 2006 has anything to do with seniority.
The way I understood the legislation when I read the blurb a couple of years ago was that after that date it will be illegal to specify a retirement age, unless there is an over-riding piece of existing legislation.
In my case this means that I have to retire at 65 (not 60) as a result of the JAR legislation already in force.
It will even be illegal to specify a retirement age for pension purposes. I would have thought that this is going to cause all sorts of problems for actuaries.
Going back to seniority; there is no existing legislation that allows the carry-forward of seniority from a previous company and it would be preposterous in any event.
Consider what would be likely to happen if such a rule existed; a good and loyal pilot who has served his company faithfully for 30 years could be shafted by some comedian from BA (for example) who takes retirement at 55 and moves in with 31 years of accumulated seniority with the old company.
Then we have a cutback. Who gets fired? Are you seriously telling me that it is supportable in law that the 30-year employee gets fired in favour of someone who has only been there for 5 minutes?
Last edited by JW411; 12th Oct 2005 at 13:51.