One of the common goals for most teachers is to obtain tenure status. This can enable the educator to maintain his or her status long term. Texas teachers in this position can be older, but that does not mean that they are a less valuable asset to their institution. There can be cases, however, when the years of servitude can result in a person losing his or her job due to age discrimination.
A group of faculty members are filing an age discrimination suit against a higher education institution that is going to be splitting into two schools. As part of the split, some jobs were to be eliminated, but the people who were fired all had tenure. Policies connected to the split focused more on retaining non-tenured faculty over the tenured, which led to great upset among the educators.
According to their complaint, the teachers who lost their jobs were all in the over-40 age bracket. They claim that the reason for their termination had nothing to do with their job performance, but only with their age. The plaintiffs also claim that their positions were not eliminated after they were removed, nor were they given an adequate amount of time to give a response to their dismissal. One of the female faculty members also claims that she was not paid an equal amount of money in comparison to her male colleagues.
The teachers in this case are claiming that, because of the loss of their positions, they are all losing a large amount of income and are going to suffer a hardship. They also claim that they are going to lose status in Texas because they were let go. If the teachers win their discrimination claim, they have the potential to be reinstated as well as recovering their lost wages.
Source: texastribune.org, Faculty Association Sues Over Job Losses in Brownsville, Reeve Hamilton, Feb. 20, 2014
