Interesting. Extracts:
“The “beep test”, a standard aerobic fitness test for prospective firefighters for the last 40 years, discriminates against women and advantages younger candidates, a tribunal has found, following a legal challenge by a prospective recruit.
Cork Fire Brigade has been ordered to pay €8,000 in compensation to Terézia Foott, a part-time firefighter aged in her 40s who failed to advance in a November 2023 recruitment competition for a full-time post because she did not make the cut…
Cork City’s Chief Fire Officer David Spillet said the beep test had been used in Cork since the 1980s.
“There is no separate standard for males and females; the same fitness requirements apply to all candidates to ensure they are capable, fit, and healthy for operational duties,” he told the Workplace Relations Commission…
Ms Foott was told she could retake the test on another day with another fire service, an option the complainant turned down, the tribunal heard…
Adjudication officer Úna Glazier-Farmer upheld Ms Foott’s complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998.
She ruled that the use of the timed shuttle and other standards for as a run as a “one-size-fits-all” standard without grading on a normative curve to consider age and gender was indirectly discriminatory.
“The respondent openly acknowledged in its evidence that there was no separate standard for males and females, and that the same fitness requirements applied to all candidates,” she noted.
In Ms Foott’s case, the beep test used by Cork Fire Brigade “was both directly discriminatory towards the complainant and indirectly discriminatory against women, while giving younger candidates a distinct advantage”, Ms Glazier-Farmer wrote.
She directed payment of €4,000 for gender discrimination and a further €4,000 for age discrimination.”
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Justice for Men & Boys 
This sort of stuff is so insane. I’m 67 and have to admit even though I’m quite fit for my age I’m simply not remotely as fit as 30 years ago! At the gym I’m one of four “dads” as the staff call us, similar age, average height in our age. All the male fitness instructors are taller than us and we joke we’re “the hobbits”. As it happens this doesn’t mean much now. But in other contexts, ie firefighting a younger bigger stronger man makes sense!
of course what has happened in the UK is that because men have won discrimination cases where they have to meet higher standards, the standards have to drop so as to get women in and not directly discriminate against men! And in Ireland so old men and women aren’t discriminated against … Or anyone whose unfit, short, unwell I suppose.
As I’ve commented before one casualty of this is disabled people, because now the fire service can’t demand big strong people work for them they can’t give the help lifting, have fire drills that include firemen lifting or rescue plans that include the same. So a lot of help for social service no longer happens, and fire risks exclude disabled people from all sorts of environments because of this change to a less fit strong workforce!
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There are a myriad of jobs where such attributes aren’t needed. It’s the attitude that jobs are a sort of “gift” to be handed out irrespective of the ability to do them! Like the days of aristocrats being put in charge of things just because of who they were, not whether they actually had any aptitude.
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