A recent Labour Court judgment may make employment more secure for people working past retirement age. It has the implication that, if you are working beyond a retirement age agreed on by you and your employer, your employer cannot then discriminate against you on the basis of age; it has to treat you as it would any other employee.
Employers will normally stipulate a retirement age of, say, 60 or 65 years, in their employment contracts, at which point employees must retire. If the employer comes to an arrangement for an employee to work beyond the accepted retirement age, say, on a fixed-term contract, it cannot use age as a reason for terminating their employment prematurely.
In the case Seokwane versus Bidvest Prestige Cleaning Services (BPCS), heard late last year,…
