A 20-year-old woman has become the first person to win a discrimination claim for being too young. Megan Thomas told the London Central Employment Tribunal that she had been dismissed from her job as a membership secretary at a London club after being told that she was too young to deal with its members.

The tribunal found that she was unfairly dismissed and discriminated against on the ground of age under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 — a piece of law originally intended to protect older workers. The tribunal is expected to award Ms Thomas compensation of about £2,000.

In a statement Ms Thomas, from Shirley Oaks, Croydon, South London, said that her £19,000-a-year job at Eight involved organising poker nights and wine-tasting events for members, as well as handling subscriptions and general office work. But in August, just four months after starting the job, she was dismissed.

She said: “I was upset to lose my job. I had never lost a job before. It was humiliating, especially because I was told I was too young and if they had met me a few years later there may not have been a problem.

“They also said that I was deceitful, sly and lacked integrity, which was hurtful and untrue.”

Four days after her dismissal, she found another, better-paid job as an office manager in the City. As a result, the tribunal awarded compensation only for injury to feelings and unpaid notice moneys.

Ms Thomas’s solicitor, Lawrence Davies, said that the ruling would help to end discrimination against young people in the workplace. He said: “This is the first time that a tribunal has ruled that age discrimination adversely affects the young and young-looking as well as the old.

“Employers will now have to look at the rights of young workers more carefully than in the past and their ability to simply dispense with them has now gone.

“Once they realise they have rights and that they have been exploited, young people are often more likely to stand up for themselves and we would hope that more young workers will now exercise their employment rights.”

Eight said that the club, whose members pay annual subscriptions of about £800, was planning to appeal against the ruling.

The club added that it was happy to employ young people and that many of the waiters and waitresses at the club were younger than Ms Thomas.

Ms Thomas said that she had been “perfectly capable of doing the job”. She added: “I was told that I was too young to do the job and that they would like to have met me in a few years. It was just an excuse to get rid of me.”

On the case

— A transgender airline worker won a claim of sex discrimination in 2005 after her bosses told her to use the disabled lavatory after her gender reassignment operation

— In 2000 Jennine Ruan sued her headmistress for discrimination when she was allegedly left out of the netball team because she had to attend a funeral in the Caribbean. She dropped the case

— Aisling Sykes sued for sex discrimination in 2000 claiming her City career was curtailed because she wanted to spend time with her children. The tribunal said she was paid enough to employ a nanny

Source: Times database

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