Age Discrimination and Labour Law: Comparative and Conceptual Perspectives in the EU and Beyond (Studies in Employment and Social Policy, 47)

In this age of flexible labour practices, where non-discrimination laws have become the major bulwark protecting individual employees, the ban on age discrimination is assuming greater prominence and complexity. Unlike other targets of non-discrimination law, age arguably remains a defensible social stratifier, and various institutional and structural determinants are of the utmost importance in understanding and assessing labour marketrelated age differences.

This book offers a topical and multifaceted discussion and analysis of EU law and the national law in a representative range of Member States on age discrimination regulation and its interrelations with labour law, while also adding important international, conceptual and comparative perspectives by including developments in Australia, Japan, Latin America, South Africa and the United States. Distinguished scholars in the fields of nondiscrimination law and labour law contribute comparative and conceptual analyses as well as analyses of national developments. With particular emphasis on the extensive, dynamic and controversial case law of the Court of Justice of the EU and its implications, topics addressed include the following:

• precarious and vulnerable workers;
• austerity measures;
• pension reform;
• employers justification of differences in treatment;
• how the goal of active ageing can be used to weaken employment protection;
• youth unemployment; and
• the dangers of intergenerational conflict and economic unsustainability.

A concluding chapter offers an overall analysis and summary from a global perspective. For its richly detailed comparative approach within the context of both non-discrimination law and labour law, these essays clearly identify and critically analyse the current and emerging challenges, possibilities and complexities in the areas where these two fields of practice overlap. The book is sure to be greatly valued by practitioners, policymakers and academics in a number of relevant fields.