KEY POINTS:
We all like to tease colleagues, family and friends about advancing age on birthdays. I've certainly given and taken a few ribbings in my time - "halfway to 70" and all that.
Sometimes, though, such jokes can go too far. In workplaces where there is a preponderance of younger workers, older staff can feel sensitive about their age. And when issues of race or sex are added into the mix, all the ingredients are there for trouble.
A Muslim employee in the UK received a 40th birthday card saying "too old to be a terrorist" from his colleagues. He claimed he had been discriminated against on the grounds of race and religious belief (he did not complain of age discrimination).
He reportedly won a settlement worth thousands of pounds after giving evidence to the UK's Employment Tribunal.
This was obviously a pretty insulting and objectionable example. In the vast majority of cases, jokes about age are not mixed in with race, and are genuinely not meant to cause offence - and nor do they.
However, this case shows that it is possible to cross the line. Sometimes jokes can genuinely offend, and employers can even be liable for their employees' discriminatory conduct.
This also affects termination situations. Where an older employee is made redundant or dismissed for "performance" reasons, an ageist workplace culture simply gives the employee ammunition to argue that something more sinister was involved. Dodgy birthday cards can be used as evidence of such a culture.
Have you ever received a card that you found offensive?
Greg Cain
Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.
