Job offers are still discriminatory

For several years, European Foundation of Human Rights (EFHR) together with the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman’s Office have been fighting against discriminatory job offers from the Internet and the press. Unfortunately, they are still being published, falsely favouring specific age group.

On 13 July 2018 EFHR approached the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman’s Office because of an offer with age requirement – candidate had to be of age between 23 and 35. Article 11 of Equal Opportunity Act provides that there can be no priority criteria in a job offer, civil service or an academic offer regarding candidate’s sex, race, nationality, language, origin, social status, beliefs, views, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity or religion. The company which published the job offer indicated that the offer was of an experimental nature and the company had not received any personal data of their candidates and that none of them got the position. After the investigation the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman’s Office concluded that the company had discriminated people aged to 23 and from 35 in breach of Article 11 of Equal Opportunity Act.

In 2018 EFHR raised 11 complaints to the Office about job offers, in which employers discriminated their candidates for various reasons (mainly on grounds of age). In 2015 EFHR together with the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman’s Office took the initiative to reduce the number of discriminatory job offers – they prepared and distributed brochures for employers presenting recommendations concerning the right equal opportunities for women and men and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Furthermore, taking into account the needs of employers, there are organised free training and consultation.