Czech Republic is one of Europe's worst countries for age discrimination By Claire Compton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
PRAGUE (The Prague Post), June 13, 2008:
Lying on your résumé is never a good idea, but one man’s tweaks revealed to him the real reason he wasn’t getting a job — his age.
Highly qualified and experienced, this fiftysomething’s job inquiries weren’t getting the responses he’d hoped for. On a hunch, he created a “shadow C.V.” that took 20 years off his age but left all other details the same.
To his dismay, his younger self elicited several job offers at places where he’d previously been stonewalled, prompting him to pick up his job search with a C.V. that did not include any clues to his age. And when pressed about it, he lied.
“Now he has a job. But he says he cannot understand why it was so difficult,” said Lucie Vidovičová, a sociologist and researcher at Masaryk University who studies age discrimination. Vidovičová’s age-altering subject asked to remain anonymous.
It appears a relatively high number of Czechs do understand why it would be so difficult to get a job after the age of 50, as many have experienced age discrimination themselves.
According to a recent study by Vidovičová, age is the most oft-cited reason for discrimination in the country. In her poll, conducted by the GfK Polling Agency on 1,810 respondents, 92 percent responded that they believed age was a factor in employment.
The 2008 study raises concerns, especially when compared with the results of a similar survey conducted in 2003. Then only 77 percent of respondents believed age was a factor in employment.
Vidovičová’s findings are not the only indication of the problem in the Czech Republic, which, despite a labor shortage, is one of the least friendly environments in all of Europe to older workers.
Some 26 percent of the country’s citizens have faced age discrimination or had friends or family members affected by it, the second-highest total in the European Union, according to a 2008 report by the European Commission’s directorate general for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. Only Latvia was higher, at 29 percent.
The report, “Discrimination in the European Union,” also explored the reasons for age discrimination, which Vidovičová describes as “complex and deeply rooted.”
Employment offices reported that the most common form of age discrimination in the work force is an employer’s preference for young women in positions as secretaries and waitresses in bars, restaurants or clubs. Even larger multinational companies are reported to discriminate on the basis of age or gender, but employment offices find their hands are tied due to lack of evidence, leaving the victims with little recourse.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is an unwillingness to make younger employees oversee older ones, regardless of experience, meaning younger generations may not advance as quickly as they like or deserve. “[Employers] find it inappropriate that young people oversee and give instructions to older employees,” the report found.
Long time coming
Without a comprehensive anti-discrimination bill, Vidovičová said there is not enough legislation to combat ageism, although laws are only a part of a solution that also needs to include a cultural shift and education.
“You also need these laws to be enforceable, understood and respected. Some people believe an anti-discrimination law will solve the situation,” she said. “But we know that laws are only part of the story. They are indicators that society does not accept the discriminatory practices, but it does not solve the issue itself.
”The Czech Republic faces possible fines after failing to pass an anti-discrimination bill before its entrance into the EU in 2004. Four years later, it is the only remaining country out of the 27 member states not to incorporate this legislation.
Though such a bill was passed in March, it was vetoed by President Václav Klaus shortly after. The bill would ensure equal access to education, work, health care and social advantages irrespective of age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, health, sex, religion and world outlook.
Vidovičová presented her findings to a June 2 session on age discrimination organized by the Chamber of Deputies’ committee for equal opportunities, which included three members of Parliament.
The next day, the lower house was expected to hold a vote attempting to overturn Klaus’ veto, but, after a proposed postponement and further discussion, there was no time left for the deputies to vote.
The fate of the bill is now uncertain after the leading opposition party, the Social Democrats, withdrew its support for the attempt to overturn the veto in protest of unrelated political appointments. Klaus has said he opposes the bill because its provisions already exist in current legislation and would add nothing new.
With the country’s population aging in general, Vidovičová believes this graying will work out some of the issues of ageism, rather than exacerbate it. A larger population of older citizens will cause greater understanding and acceptance of older workers, she said, pointing to a McDonald’s program that recruits older workers as an example of a shift in hiring practices.
“As there is an increasing number of older people in society, older faces will become more common in the media and advertisements,” she said. “One day people will realize the aging population actually means people born in the ’70s. It will become ‘us,’ not ‘them.’ ”
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