When it comes to retiring from a position at any place of employment, there may be certain procedures in place. Management may all decide together on a timeline and the quest to find a replacement may begin before the retiree actually leaves the job. Colorado employees near retirement may want to follow the story of a hospital employee who is claiming age discrimination after he decided not to retire.
The man is a former chief financial officer for a hospital. He is contending that he was forced to retire and there were active attempts to push him out, including deleting necessary messages about meetings, limitations put on his duties and defamation in the form of remarks about his personal finances. He is seeking monetary damages.
The hospital claims they did not discriminate against the individual. They contend he informed them of plans to retire and went through all of the proper procedures to retire. However, according to the hospital, he changed his mind unexpectedly and they were already in the process of replacing him. The hospital officials made the decision to continue with the retirement and replacement process as they saw it was best for the hospital overall.
Age discrimination may be a very difficult position to prove or even defend. However, there are many cases where older employees have felt pushed to retire or to leave a company to make room for a younger work force. If any Colorado employee feels that they were encouraged to even forced to leave a position sooner than they planned, or, as in this case, changed their mind about retirement plans and were still made to leave, knowing the current age discrimination statutes may be beneficial.
Source: sunjournal.com, “Former employee claims age discrimination in suit against Franklin Community Health Network,” Ann Bryant, Aug. 1, 2013