To engage the Wealth
Of Wisdom to be
found amongst older people
OLDER PEOPLE WRITTEN OFF BY AGE DISCRIMINATION LAWS
Chris J Perry MA RSW
Director Age Concern Hampshire
former Director of Social Services South Glamorgan County Council
winner of a 2004 individual “Age Positive” award
The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which outlaw discrimination on 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 six 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 realise 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 Lukes 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. /cont...
Putting the
WOW
into retirement
