Job Discrimination Against Teenagers (Part 4)

I do apologise, I have had to work backwards with this article and divide it into 5 smaller separate posts because the Blogger software I'm using seems to have had a Tumblr moment (an inability to cope with a large blog post!) I love Tumblr though really I do!

Now one can understand if a child, teenager, young person or anyone for instance who has a disability requires a person of a certain gender to look after them and attend to any of their personal needs, then of course it is appropriate that a girl should have a woman care for her etc. So in cases like this then exceptions under the Equality Act 2010 are fair and valid.

The difficulty however that arises when an employer either deliberately or unintentionally discriminates against a young person who obviously on the balance of probabilities wont have previous experience is that exceptions under the equality act 2010 can not (surely?) incorporate the exclusion of young people age 16 years + who have left school, from the work place ( forgive me, I am yet to read the relevant parts of this act, as I am very pressed for time today but when I have a chance I shall take a look and see what it says) because if the equality act did allow for age related work exclusion of 16 - 21 year olds, then it would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights Article 14 Which is Freedom From Discrimination. Surprisingly this protocol does not specifically mention age discrimination but the loophole here (I hope) is in the wording of this part of the convention...

"The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status".

"Such as" therefore should be suffice to allow age discrimination to be incorporated into Article 14.

Scroll down for part 5