A Study on the employment barriers of age discrimination and the necessity for enacting special act against age discrimination

• Main Authors: Me-lin Jen, 鄭美玲
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/52226773441468116837

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 勞工所 === 96 === The increasing age of labor force in current aging society has posed tremendous “age barriers” to the middle-aged labor in the workplace and subsequently deprived their lawful employment rights. Taiwan is not an isolated case in this regard, because middle-aged employment has already became a worldwide issue, leading an overwhelming trend of legislation against age discrimination in most of the modern societies. Based on the collected data concerning the difficulties middle-aged encounter during their job searching process, this study aims to explore the argumentative basis of legislative protection through employment discrimination theory, equality theory, and right of work. A further examination of the necessity for enacting special age-discrimination act in the workplace will be followed by a reviewing of the U.S. legal system and Taiwan’s anti-discrimination acts etc. Findings show that the stereotypical impression held by the general public, that middle-aged labor are mostly incapable of meeting the physical, capacity, and skill requirements in the current workplace, is the root cause for various employment barriers such as, vacancy selection, promotion, labor conditions, job transferring, retirement, lay-off and so forth. “Age discrimination,” a nightmare that haunts middle-aged labor. Further finding shows that the short-term job measure, adopted by the government in their employment-promotion package targeting on the middle-aged, has fallen short in increasing a stable and long-term employment opportunities, since the root cause lies not in their lacking of employment related information or professional skill, but in the “age” barrier. All related past experiences, domestic or overseas, have provide strong verification that the vision of “equal opportunity for equal working capability” held by modern societies should and need to be established upon a sound legal system. Regardless of specifying “age discrimination” as violation against the law, all relevant laws and regulations, without concrete standards and effective implementation, can’t seem to exert enforcement on employers. In contrast, labors, stuck in the dilemma, have no legal basis to channel their complaints or grievances. The rampancy of “age discrimination” thus escapes the laws and still survives. To reverse the present weakening structure in the “age” dimension of middle-aged labor, the government, besides modifies critical labor laws and regulations, should actively embark on drafting age discrimination act to put a check on the popular age discrimination practices, and provide a channel for effective remedy measures as an alternatively indirect method to solve the problem of middle-aged unemployment.