Originally posted by andrew.m.wright
Originally posted by GrahamN
..is it you cant discriminate against age?
G.
Yep that's the basis of the new employment law that became law last week ..
Indeed. It's fair enough to impose a lower age of 18 because of a stack of good reasons. For instance, you're not being able to sell alcohol if you're under age 18, and more importantly, most countries require by law that cabin crew have to be at least 18 on safety grounds.
But the lower limit of 19 is basically arbitrary - a 19 year old isn't going to be magically better at anything that someone who's 18 - and so because you can't "objectively justify" the policy, keeping it would have been a breach of the Age Discrimination Regulations. Hence VS have dropped into line.
As an HR lawyer, I can confidently say the new law is a hideous, badly thought-out mess, and an absolute nightmare to help clients implement[:(].
Anyway - can't imagine the change having that much effect in practice. If I were you McCoy, I shouldn't be holding my breath for an airline crewed entirely by nubile 18-year-olds any time soon.