A 58 year old sacked senior executive has just won £3.17 million in an age discrimination and unfair dismissal case. This is one of the biggest awards ever made by an Employment Tribunal. Mr Cowie was a £300k a year divisional president at FTSE 250 global engineering firm Vesuivus. He had been there for 37 years. When attending a meeting with other executives 18 months prior to his dismissal, his younger boss, Mr Andre, was said to have publicly called him an “old fossil” who did not “know how to manage millennials”. He was also said to have commented that, “These new millennials will never stop pushing until they have my job and you older guys have to get used to it”. The Tribunal heard how Mr Andre started to direct that any new recruits be no more than 45 years old, to bring high potential younger employees into the workforce. Then that Mr Andre criticised Mr Cowie’s performance behind his back to the Board and took covert steps to replace him. Once that replacement had been found, Mr Cowie was unceremoniously sacked. His successor was a younger woman. The Tribunal held that Mr Cowie had been unfairly dismissed and suffered unlawful age discrimination at the hands of the company and Mr Andre personally. Mr Cowie explained how this treatment had seriously impacted him, his confidence and his mental health. He accused the firm of having an institutional and deep rooted prejudice against older employees. It took him a four year fight for justice to be awarded this landmark victory.