Age discrimination: Spotlight on Jersey

The Channel Islands are of course subject to (often very) different legislation and government structures to the UK but I hadn’t realised until today that age discrimination in Jersey is not currently illegal.

According to this item in the Jersey Evening Post legislation is now being actively considered to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of age.  If adopted, this would cover recruitment, paid work, voluntary work, partnerships, professional bodies, education, training, public premises, clubs and associations.

Anti-discrimination legislation in Jersey certainly seems to lag behind the UK. It was only in September 2014 that the island introduced a law banning discrimination on the grounds of race. In 2015, discrimination on the grounds of gender was outlawed (which is some 40 years after the original Sex Discrimination Act 1975 in the UK, now subsumed under the Equality Act 2010).  And Jersey hasn’t yet got round to introducing protection against disability discrimination – this is apparently planned to happen in 2017 or 2018.

I’m not sure why they couldn’t introduce legislation to protect against discrimination on all these grounds together. Or indeed why it has taken so long to bring them in at all….. It reminds me a bit of the recent film Sufragette which after the credits showed a list of when various countries introduced universal female suffrage; there were some shocks, like Switzerland which was something like 1971.

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