Lidl destroyed records in Ireland to avoid being caught for age discrimination

Lidl has been caught for destroying employment records to escape charges of age discrimination. The Irish Examiner tells about a 51 year old man who says that was not employed as a district manager because he was too old. After he filed a complaint with the Equality Tribunal, and Lidl was notified of it, the company proceeded to destroy all records of the other applicants.

The Tribunal has now found Lidl guilty of age discrimination, and ordered the hard discounter to pay 5,000 pounds to the man.

UNI-Europa Commerce and EuroCommerce have concluded a European social dialogue agreement on promoting age diversity in commerce. The agreement has been positively received by government authorities, employers and trade unions, and combating age discrimination is one of the priority issues for the European Commission.

Although not surprising, Lidl's discrimination of older workers should be a reason for serious concern. The pattern of discrimination is clearly visible in the company's hiring advertisements and policies Europe-wide, which do not hide that the intention is to employ young people, particularly for management positions at different levels.

These young people are then trained in Germany, to make sure that Lidl's brutal approach to dealing with its personnel - the management by intimidation and fear principle - is applied all through the company.