by Chris J Perry MA RSW
Director of Age Concern Hampshire
former Director of Social Services South Glamorgan County Council - winner of 2004 individual 'age positive' award
The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which outlaw discrimination on the grounds of age in the recruitment, training and promotion of employees and extend employment rights in respect of unfair dismissal, redundancy and sickness benefit beyond the age of 65 years came into effect in October this year. However, it is somewhat inconsistent, and indeed a breach of human rights therefore, that employers can still 'retire' people over the age of 65 years with 6 months notice and refuse applications for employment from people over the age of 64 years and 6 months. No other group of people can be totally excluded from the workplace or discriminated against in this way.
Britain was given special dispensation and a three year extension to comply with the European Directive to have legislation in place to outlaw discrimination in the workplace on ground of age by December 2003 - and now this! It is a total disgrace.
Employers will have a duty to consider requests from employees to go on working beyond the age of 65 years and older workers will get sickness benefit - but little more as far as the over 65's are concerned. The awareness of 'age discrimination' in Britain is about where that of 'race discrimination' was in the 1950's.
During the recent parliamentary debate on getting people off benefit and back to work the majority of members of all political parties prefaced their remarks by saying 'people of working age'. They were trying to be kind but did not realize that by so doing they were excluding everyone over the age of 65 years.
Until we stop thinking 'people of working age' and that 'older people don't work' we shall never tackle the institutionalised ageism' within our society.
Professor John Young, of the "Academic Unit of the Elderly Care and Rehabilitation" at St Luke's Hospital, Bradford, wrote in the Editorial of the August edition of the British Medical Journal that decades of health service underfunding had provided an environment in which ageism had flourished - "it is endemic" he said.
The new employment laws will help people who wish to go on working for their current employer: they will not help older people who are trying to return to work, such as Dinah Warnock who had her contract terminated before she could start because she was 67 years of age, or people who are trying to change their job.
That employers will still be able to have a retirement age of 65 years and legally reject applications from people over the age of sixty-four years and six months is discriminatory in the extreme. Those continuing to work will have their employment rights extended: those out of work, or wishing to change their job, will have no rights what so ever. This is both inconsistent and discriminatory. Just imagine the outcry if it were legal not to shortlist women, not to short list black people, not to short list people with disabilities. And yet it continues to be legal not to short list people over the age of 64 years and 6 months. This is just not acceptable.
59% of respondents in a recent national survey said that they envisaged working on beyond the age of 65 years and 64% of respondents in the same survey felt that it was virtually impossible to get work over the age of 55 years. There are currently 2.8 million people, a third of the population, between 50 and 65 years out of work and the number of men out of work in this age group has doubled over the last 30 years. The new legislation will help these people.
83% of delegates at Age Concern Hampshire's 2003 "Worthy of Work and Pensions" conference thought that there should be no fixed retirement age and that people should be allowed to go on working for as long as they choose or are able - deciding when it is right for them to retire - and this had increased to 100% by October 2005. 83.3% thought that age at which people could, if they so chose, draw their pension should be entirely separate to an age at which they must retire.
Britain is currently ranked 27th in the 30 most developed countries in the world for its level of State Pension. When the earnings link was removed in 1981 the state pension was just 24% of national average earnings, it is now 15% and by 2012 is likely to be as little as 12%. There was a 37% erosion of prices linked pensions, both state and occupational, against earnings between 1981 and 2000 and now the 2004 Pension Act has capped the maximum annual uplift for inflation on occupational pensions at 2.5%. If inflation were to run at 3% this would halve the purchasing power over a 20 year period on top of the 37% erosion.
A recent survey suggested that older people spent between 25% and 30% less on food than is required for a nutritional diet and are concerns about malnutrition and winter deaths - the highest in Europe. Professor Alan Walker told the National Pensioners Convention in Blackpool that 1/5 of pensioners, 2.2 million people, in Britain live below the official poverty line. That is an absolute disgrace: Britain remains the 4th largest economy in the world.
There is a correlation between income and demand upon the health services in all age groups.
Older people are caught between a rock and a hard place facing increasing poverty the longer they live and yet prevented from going out to earn more. It is scandalous that in the 21st century with so much emphasis on social inclusion and non discriminatory practice that people can be excluded from the workforce for no other reason than their date of birth - which has nothing to do with their ability.
Winston Churchill was 66 when he first became Prime Minister and 77 when he was elected for the second time. Dorothy Morton trained as an air hostess with Britannia Airways at the age of 74 years.
Even with the changes in legislation and providing that employers go through the correct procedure they can "retire" someone with 6 months notice. The "default" retirement age of 65 years is an infringement of human rights. Average life expectancy for women is now 80.7 years and yet no one is suggesting that people should be buried when they reach this age - dead or alive. If it were left to the individual to decide when it is right for them to retire and draw their pension and we were able to restore the balance between work and retirement the perceived skills shortage and pension crisis would simply evaporate.