Re: Age Health Benefits Discrimination
Under the contract between you and your employer, provided you performed satisfactorily, you were owed a review, medical benefits, and a good-faith evaluation of whether the conditions for the bonus were satisfied. Your employer is in breach of the promise for the review, the medical insurance, and probably the good-faith consideration for the $3000. Their excuses are not legally sufficient, and will hold no water. There is a good chance that they were operating in bad faith from the beginning, especially because he has done this to others.
In particular, with regard to the medical, if it is the case that he did this because of your age (40+), he is also in breach of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), as well as the equivalent California law. However, the facts to support advanced age as a motivation are not quite so clear. If there is a pattern of taking particular advantage of older workers in one way or another (such as with health insurance), this could supply the sufficient evidence.
What to do? There are several recourses. You may wish to hire an attorney to represent you. Alternatively, you may wish, at least initially, to pursue the more affordable alternative of filing a claim with the EEOC, alleging age discrimination with regard to the health insurance, and possibly the other breaches as well. Could you allege, in good faith, that you at least suspect that the denial of the review and the $3,000 bonus were at least partially motivated by your age? If so: if you file with the EEOC, your employer will suddenly have the federal government breathing down their neck, poking its nose into their business. No employer looks forward to this prospect. This could, at the outset, pressure them to give you what you are due. And the EEOC has a mediation program in which you could push for what you believe you are entitled to. Keep in mind, filing with the EEOC, and recovering within its processes, will cost you nothing. If you find their processes dissatisfactory, you are always free to then take your case to an attorney.
Caveat: you have 300 days to file with the EEOC from the time of discrimination.
Also: if, after filing with the EEOC you experience what you feel to be retaliation, this constitutes a separate, additional violation of the ADEA.
If you wish for full-on representation, by all means contact Atty. Nelson or another qualified attorney. If you are interested in narrowly-tailored guidance on the in’s and out’s of the EEOC and DFEH processes, feel free to contact me.
