Age as criteria for wage cut

shayser

Can an employer decide to implement a wage cut whereby employees under a certain age are asked to take an X% cut and employees over that age take a Y% cut? Y is a larger figure than X, if that's relevant.

eejoynt

under the payment of wages act you have to agree to a wage cut---its a deduction in wages
follow link

http://www.unionconnect.ie/rights/7/

a differential wage cut based on age is also illegal under equality legislation

contact the equality authority

Newaglish

No, they definitely can't!

There's a small possibility they could get away with a larger cut for younger people (unlikely though), but certainly not the other way around.

tenchi-fan

Of course they cannot single out older staff for a paycut.

Are you being genuine here?

Or is it a case that staff earning over a certain SALARY are getting a larger percentage pay-cut, but these staff are on higher wages than the younger & probably newer staff?

It is absolutely fine for an employer to give say a 5% paycut to staff earning under €30k and a 10% paycut to staff earning over €30k.

shayser

Thanks for the replies. Yes, this is a genuine query about a genuine situation. Nothing has been put on the table yet but I do know what's coming and the request to staff will be that employees aged over 30 years old will be asked to take a larger cut than those under 30. I did think that that would age discrimination.

dudara

It most definitely sounds illegal. Contact NERA for further advice.

gerrycollins

age cannot be used as a mechanisim like that. I cant believe a company is even thinking about it.