UCD forced to shell out over ageism
Academic, 64, awarded €30,000
AN experienced academic has won her case against UCD after the college passed her over for a job on age grounds.
Dr Anne Cleary, 64, will now be promoted to a senior lecturer post after a Workplace Relations Commission ruling.
The sociologist has also been awarded €30,000 in compensation and will get back pay and pension benefits she would have been entitled to had she won the promotion.
Candidate got ‘excellent’ mark
UCD has been ordered to compensate a sociologist and promote her to senior lecturer on the grounds of age discrimination.
The Workplace Relations Commission made the ruling, which includes a €30,000 payout, after Dr Anne Cleary took her case against the college and provided a detailed table on the ages of job applicants.
The WRC has also demanded that Dr Cleary, 64, be recognised as a senior lecturer going back to February 15, 2015, when the job was first available
This means UCD will also have to pay her a senior lecturer salary for the last three years.
WRC adjudication officer Stephen Bonnlander said her pension entitlements and payments should also be upgraded accordingly.
On behalf of Dr Cleary, an unidentified expert witness ‘expressed astonishment’ to the WRC that Dr Cleary’s 20 years’ worth of contributions to UCD and the greater community were still not good enough to earn her a promotion to senior lecturer.
A lecturer since 1996, Dr Cleary was aged 61 when passed over for promotion, while the successful candidate was 20 years younger than her.
Dr Cleary argued that she was discriminated against on the grounds of age, since older lecturers were significantly less successful in the promotion round.
UCD denied that the promotion of the successful candidate in the College of Human Sciences was tainted by discrimination and that the lecturer cited by Dr Cleary secured better marks in the application process.
As part of her case, Dr Cleary supplied a data table showing that by age, a steadily falling percentage of applicants were promoted to senior lecturer: 69.7% of applicants in the 30-39 age group, 51.7% in the 40-49 age group and 48% in the 50-59 age.
Mr Bonn-leader reported: ‘Most notably, not a single of the four candidates in the 60-65 age group, to whom the complainant belongs, was promoted.’
In his findings, Mr Bonnlander found that while the fact that no applicant over 60 achieved promotion may not be a statistically significant fact due to small numbers, as was posited by UCD, ‘it remains a fact nevertheless and thus acceptable as evidence’.
On her academic credentials, Dr Cleary reported that she had the highest research funding in her school, had been able to employ postdoctoral staff, had supervised three PhD theses and one master’s thesis by research.
She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to Berkeley and Harvard Universities in 2009, and Dr Cleary pointed out that all other Irish academics who received this scholarship were either full professors or senior lecturers and that the application process was ‘extremely competitive’. She also provided evidence to the WRC from within her professional environment, which shows that younger colleagues promoted over her were by no means significantly better qualified. She joined UCD’s School of Sociology in 1992 from a health research background and received academic tenure in 1997 and obtained her PhD in 2006.
The WRC report records that at the time of the competition, the successful candidate for one of the senior lecturer roles cited by Dr Cleary had no Fulbright backing, had only secured research funding of about €5,000, had not employed any post-docs.
Mr Bonnlander said despite this differential in achievements, the successful candidate had retained her mark of ‘excellent’ in teaching and learning which made it possible for her to obtain promotion to senior lecturer.
In his ruling, Mr Bonnlander also found that UCD did not discriminate against Dr Cleary on the grounds of gender.