Age Discrimination: “The Golden Handshake”

This is a very complicated issue of workplace discrimination. When companies are having financial troubles they often let employees go. Sometimes they offer “early retirement” packages to their older employees. Essentially what is happening here is what is termed as the “golden handshake”, a forced early retirement because the person in question makes too much money for the company to continue supporting them.

While some people do not have problem with this problem and would happily take the early retirement option from a down-sizing company, other people see this as age discrimination; and in a way, they’re right. However, this is not an illegal practice unless it can be proved that the employee was being let go solely because of his or her advanced age. Otherwise, employers can and will do this as often as they like.