For most young people the idea of giving up work at the age of 50 and living a life of leisure is rather appealing. Why slog your guts out when you could be pursuing your real interest in life – whether it be golf, sailing or daytime television?
However, for thousands of people across the UK who have been forced to take early retirement or been made redundant before the official retirement age of 65 (or 60 for women) the idea of being free to do what they want is not so attractive.
In fact, it is downright depressing. More importantly, many can not afford to retire so early.
Take Paul Wilcock. After reluctantly accepting a voluntary redundancy package from NatWest Bank in 1996 after 30 years’ service he found himself on the scrapheap as far as potential employers were concerned.
“I sent off hundreds of application forms. I knew I could do the jobs I was applying for but I was lucky if I had a reply from one in 10 of them,” he said. He believes the reason for his lack of success was his age.
“When I left NatWest I was 49. There is an assumption of you that if you are older you are going to cost the company more,” said Wilcock, who after a year of searching landed a job at the Oldham Chamber of Commerce.
According to employers’ group the Employers Forum on Age, Wilcock is not alone. In a survey of 2,000 employees conducted by the EFA 25% felt they had been victims of age discrimination during their working lives.
“In the past 20 years there has been a reduction in industries like manufacturing. IT developments and cost cutting have all led companies to reduce staff and a lot of companies have used age as a starting point for downsizing,” said campaign director at the EFA, Helen Garner.
The situation is so bad that the Government has stepped in and taken action. Though it has fallen short of legislating against age discrimination, it has devised a voluntary code of practice.
Launched on June 2 the code aims to provide advice on best practice in tackling unfair age discrimination in every aspect of employment from recruitment and training through to redundancy and retirement. For example, it advises employers to remove age limits or age ranges in recruitment advertisements. It also recommends that employers use a mixed age range interviewing panel in recruitment procedures.
But why the big fuss? Older people have had a good innings at work, surely it’s only right that younger people are favoured at interviews and when it comes to redundancies? Absolutely not, according to Garner at the EFA.
Statistics show that Britain’s age profile is changing dramatically. By 2000 for example 35% of the labour force will be aged over 45, a figure that will rise to almost 40% by 2010.
This presents a major challenge for employers. “In ten years’ time more than a quarter of the workplace will be aged over 50. This is a huge resource, for business and for the country. It is a resources pool that could be wasted unless we tackle the way stereotypes based on age wrongly exclude people from jobs and training. It is a resource that we can not afford to waste,” states minister for employment, welfare to work and equal opportunities, Andrew Smith in his foreword to the Government’s code.
“If you accept an ageist culture you are encouraging age discrimination at all levels. It is not just older people who suffer. People as young as 25 can also be victims,” said Garner at the EFA which represents over 100 employers, including Boots, Sainsbury’s, Nationwide, McDonald’s and British Airways.
The fact that BA is the only travel company in the EFA membership is an indication that ageism is not high on the agenda in the travel industry
One exception is Going Places which is recruiting 200 over 30s onto a special training programme in a bid to redress the balance of its workforce (Travel Weekly May 24).
“Surveys show that our customers want to see a balanced workforce,” said corporate programmes manager Judy Woods.
Garner believes it will only be a matter of time before other travel companies are forced to follow suit.
“Their traditional pool of labour, which is young people, is drying up and they may find it more difficult to find people who are prepared to work for relatively low wages,” she said.