Background. In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination in employment based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin was prohibited. These groups were seen as entities who had borne the brunt of severe past discrimination. The act was a giant step forward in industrial relations in terms of preventing employers form arbitrarily discriminating against their employees for non job-related reasons. However, Age Discrimination in employment was not prohibited by Title VII. Subsequently in 1967, another statute was enacted to pro

Age Discrimination Employment Act. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was enacted in 1967, and made it unlawful to discriminate against any individual with respect to his/her compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment, because of the individual’s age. The Act uses the enforcement provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and covers employers who have 20 or more employees for at least 20 weeks in a year, labor unions of 25 or more members, and employment agencies (Levin, 2002). State and local governments were included in the term “employer” by amendments in 1974.

Age discrimination has been a source of major concern and litigation for organizations in the past, particularly in the context of performance evaluation decisions. Much attention has been directed toward these decisions, perhaps due to the central role of this system in organizations. Age has been investigated in the context of performance evaluation in a number of studies, but little progress has been made in explaining the processes and dynamics underlying observed negative correlations in the age-performance rating relationship. Now when older employee are objectively rated, it appears that not only to they not perform inferior to younger employees, but they tend to perform better (Ferris & King, 2002). However when supervisors are asked to subjectively evaluate the performance of older and younger employees, they see it as just the opposite.

Remedies. Remedies available under the ADEA are similar to those available under the Equal Pay Act. Successful employees can recover any back wages owed. They may also recover an equal amount as liquidated damages if the employ

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