David Penberthy

October 1, 2016

A MATE of mine who rightly describes himself as a grumpy old man told me a  great grumpy old man joke the other day. It involved a man in his late 50s, recently retrenched, who had typed up a CV for the first time in decades and was being interviewed by a 20-something HR woman at a job placement firm about his qualities as an employee.
“Do you think that you have any weaknesses?” she asked, routinely.
“Probably honesty,” he said.
“I don’t think honesty is a weakness,” she said.
“I don’t give a f–k what you think,” he replied.
Many a true word is said in jest. I like this joke because it goes to the heart of the perception that older workers — or in this bloke’s case, non-workers — are irascible and stuck in their ways. Also, older workers are seen as providing limited return on investment, to use that cliched management term.
Why bother hiring a crotchety know-it-all who might give you a decade of productivity, when you could stump for a bright young thing to shape in your image, and hopefully hold on to for years?
Our economy is at a crossroads, shifting from its reliance on manu-facturing and mining to the new service and data-driven industries.
There has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian, our Prime Minister says.
For many people, most of them men aged in their 50s and early 60s, there has never been a more unnerving time to be an Australian — because so many people being squeezed out of jobs are older men.

‘So much of the discussion around unemployment has focused on the young.’

Men who, if sacked, will never work again. The figures are borne out by the depressing statistic that anyone who is retrenched over the age of 55 will spend at least twice as long on the dole as a person under that age. And a 2014 study by the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre revealed that 96 per cent of people aged 55 to 59 who were retrenched wound up retiring, even though many were desperate to work again.
So much of the discussion around unemployment has focused on the young. There have been calls to raise the Newstart allowance from $264 a week to $317, a $53-a-week increase that would cost the Budget $7.7 billion.
It’s been pushed by the Australian Council of Social Service and the Australian Industry Group fearing the current rate is so low that people cannot present themselves properly or travel to look for jobs. I have no way of knowing whether the public agrees with the ACOSS and AIG position. My hunch is that many would be suspicious of the proposed rise, fearing that young people who could be rightly described as bludgers would treat it as their personal payday.
The public view would be different, however, if you asked people to compare the indolent 20-somethings who had never looked for work in his life, and the middle-aged man who had done nothing but work, and who found out last Monday his company was shifting operations to Beijing or Bangalore.
The Federal Government’s logic in denying calls for a Newstart increase is that it risks turning the welfare safety net into a hammock. I agree with that view for younger workers with no dependants, and no interest in working. I am not sure if it is fair for older people who have mortgages, debts, children — and a burning desire to work again.

The Federal Government’s logic in denying calls for a Newstart increase is that it risks turning the welfare safety net into a hammock.
I am not suggesting that every unemployed young person doesn’t want to work. There are some suburbs in Australia where the old blue-collar jobs have gone forever.
But there are plenty of younger people who would not work in an iron lung. Surely the best way to get them off their behinds is with less carrot, and more stick.
One of the more illuminating moments of my journalistic career came about 10 years ago when I was asked to go from editing newspapers to running a news website. You could not have found a team more adept to the digital age, be it writing HTML code, or generating new audiences via social media channels.
Their only weakness, as purported journalists, was that many of them didn’t know what The Dismissal was, how Harold Holt disappeared, or who the hell Harold Holt even was. We had replaced people who were walking encyclopedias with the Wikipedia generation. As a community, we do that every time we sort through the CVs on the basis of age, not to forget perceived grumpiness.

Source: Sun Herald

Just as companies have shifted on the area of gender and race diversity in the workplace, they now need to change their mindset to encourage older workers to remain employed.
Australian companies need to adopt aged worker-friendly policies in order to survive and attract the best talent.

PwC’s The Golden Age Index report found businesses should look to adopt flexible working policies, such as “phased retirement”, or expanding training programs to encourage and support their older workforce.

“They should also take steps to achieve age diversity, for example through opening up apprenticeship schemes to older workers so that they can capitalise on their experience,” the report said.

PwC people and organisation partner Jon Williams said Australian companies had made gains on improving diversity in the workplace but needed a mindset change to implement policies to attract and retain older staff.

“Companies need to change workplace policies to allow people to work much more flexibly and they need to change culture,” Mr Williams said.

“We’ve moved on the diversity lens now we need to extend that to age.”

He said when blue collar jobs were automated the whole job was lost, but when it came to white collar roles only parts would be replaced.

“In the long term we’re going to need human skills, not computer skills, intuition and application of experience to solve social problems and that fits well into the older workforce’s skills, and unless we tap into these people we’re going to undercut our ability as a country.”

Mr Williams said there was no reason why older workers couldn’t be taught science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills but also the next wave of jobs in aged care would value older workers with life experience skills.

Companies such as electricity operator Transgrid are implementing plans to encourage older workers to remain employed.

The company undertakes strategic workforce planning each year to enable analysis of risks and fill gaps over the next five to 10 years.

It found a number of years ago there was an “age-cliff” as many engineers planned for retirement.

In response, the organisation brought on quite a number of graduates over a few years in preparation for transferring mid-career engineers into senior engineering roles.

Staff are also given other benefits including flexible work arrangements to phased retirement such as a condensed four-day week, a nine-day fortnight, 35-hour week, 15 per cent superannuation and personal leave of 18 days a year.

At Australia Post, 50 per cent of the workforce is over 45 years of age.

In 2010 the company introduced a policy whereby those over 53 years of age and with at least five years’ continuous service have been able to request flexible working arrangements in order to transition to retirement.

Employees may access their accrued long service leave or annual leave on a regular or patterned basis to maintain their salary.

With five generations in the workforce for the first time in its history, Westpac provides employees aged over 50 a “Prime of Life” program where they are given support to plan their next move, including transition to retirement.

Source: Australian Financial Review

Power station bosses to get rid of workers aged over 55 – because they are ‘too old to face challenging changes’

Bosses at Gladstone Power Station want to slash 20 per cent of their staff and will target older workers who might not be able to face ‘challenging changes’ ahead, The Courier Mail reported.
The cuts will see 46 of the 230-strong staff left without a job.
Workers at a powers station in Gladstone could face early retirement as the business structure is changed
Workers at a powers station in Gladstone could face early retirement as the business structure is changed
The move has been attacked for being from the ‘dark ages’ by National Seniors chief executive officer Michael O’Neill.
‘We have grave concerns … workers are being targeted based on their age … and it infers that older employees are inflexible and unable to learn new skills,’ Mr O’Neill said.
The power company has already lodged plans for their ‘early retirement’ scheme with the Australian Taxation office.
The company’s offer will see workers between 55 and 65 enter their retirement with 12 month’s pay.
‘The purpose of the scheme is to rationalise and reorganise Gladstone’s operations to meet their future business needs and increasing operational costs,’ the company told the tax office.
The company is offering workers over 55 early retirement and needs to shed 20 per cent of its workforce
The company is offering workers over 55 early retirement and needs to shed 20 per cent of its workforce
Craig Giddins from the Electrical Trades Union in Central Queensland said the company is replacing the older staff members because they cost more money.
‘I believe that the older workers have been targeted due to their high liability impact, they take longer to heal, age related sickness, bad backs, necks, limbs in general, cancer or other long term illness,’ Mr Giddins said.
The company has 129 workers over 50 on its books, 33 of those are over 60.
Workers born after 1965 must work until they are 70 years old, under the Turnbull government.
There are 129 workers over 50 at the station, and around 46 jobs to be cut

By BELINDA CLEARY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
PUBLISHED: 01:34 EST, 10 June 2016

Source: Daily Mail

May 31st, 2016

Just a few years ago, when unemployment hovered at 10%, employers had their pick of job candidates. Getting hired was tough. But now, with unemployment at 5%, it’s a candidates market.

That was just one piece of welcome news I heard last week while attending Indeed Interactive in Austin, Texas, an annual gathering of recruiting leaders and members of the media, eager to learn about the forces shaping the rapidly evolving labor market.

Since Indeed.com is the world’s No. 1 job site and the leading source of external online hires, it has a goldmine of job-related data. Combine that with Indeed’s proprietary research and you get a fascinating assessment of what’s happening in the job market and what you can likely expect in the near future.

2 Takeaways From a Global Labor Market Report

First, the big picture. At the conference, I picked up a copy of Indeed’s Labor Market Outlook 2016, which looked at 12 countries, and came away with two key takeaways: 1) There is a growing disparity between the highest and lowest wage earners due to the growing specialization of the labor force and 2) Tech jobs are hot and increasingly challenging to fill.

“Lots of jobs are disappearing as a result of technology and automation. Up to 50% of U.S. jobs may be at risk due to automation,” Tara Sinclair, Indeed’s chief economist, said at the conference. “But at the same time we see tons of jobs disappearing, millions more are appearing.” Two examples of emerging industries, according to Sinclair: fitness wearables and virtual learning. Along with tech, health care is the “massive elephant in the job creation space,” Sinclair noted.

Sinclair emphasized that job seekers need to adapt to the constantly changing landscape. That means they need to look for ways to apply their skills in fields other than the ones they’ve been in and be open to picking up new skills. She cited the growth of short-term coding schools as one way job hunters can quickly improve their marketability.

3 Bright Spots for 50+ Job Seekers and Workers

Sinclair urged the audience of recruiters to adapt as well. I found three of her recommendations to them especially encouraging for job seekers and workers who are 50+:

1. Offer more flexible work opportunities One way to attract and retain talented boomers, Sinclair said, is allowing them to work flexible hours (including part-time) and remotely. Interest in flexible work arrangements is on the rise. At Indeed, searches for them rose 42% from 2013 to 2015.

Incidentally, contrary to popular belief that part-time and remote jobs tend to be low paying, low skill work, over half of the top 50 keywords associated with searches for flexible work are related to high-skill jobs — many of them in the hard-to-fill tech and health care fields.

2. Consider job candidates without college degrees Sinclair admitted that as a college professor (she teaches at George Washington University), this was a tough recommendation to swallow. But she warned employers that it’s unlikely the pool of college-educated candidates will be large enough to fill job openings in the years ahead.

So if you’re looking for work but lack a college degree, you may soon have a better chance getting an employer’s interest.

3. Find ways to engage and retain older workers Referring to the coming “Baby Boomer Bomb” (aka “the brain drain” due to massive numbers of boomers who’ll retire), Sinclair told the audience: “You are facing a looming shortage of talent, particularly as the baby boomers retire. By 2020, workers age 55+ will likely account for 25% of the labor force. If you think of all those people leaving the work force, it’s likely to have all sorts of economic repercussions. But if you can find ways to engage the older workers and transfer their knowledge to the young, that’s how you can help increase the economic pie in new ways.”

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Nancy Collamer, Contributor

Source: Forbes

Date
May 14, 2016

Viktoria Rother made a terrible miscalculation. When she took voluntary redundancy aged 45, the former customs officer felt certain that as an educated, single, child-free professional she would soon find full-time work.

But her lack of luck in the job market left her in despair. Finally a recruiter laid out the brutal truth. “She informed me frankly that most employers weren’t interested in people my age or older; they preferred to employ those under 40.”

“I lost hope of ever finding paid work again,” Ms Rother said.

Age and disability discrimination commissioner Susan Ryan.
Age and disability discrimination commissioner Susan Ryan. Photo: Rohan Thompson
After hearing countless stories like this, Age and Disability Discrimination Commissioner Susan Ryan is “enraged at the unfairness” that perfectly capable people in their 50s or younger are constantly being told they are “a bit long in the tooth for this job”.

​”It is unthinkable that people who lose their jobs in their 50s may live up to another 40 years without paid employment,” said Ms Ryan.

Ongoing, systemic age and disability workforce discrimination is not only a massive drain on the economy but has devastating consequences for individuals, a national inquiry led by Ms Ryan has concluded.

Raden Dunbar got a taste of the age discrimination he’d dished out to others when he was hiring in the past.
Raden Dunbar got a taste of the age discrimination he’d dished out to others when he was hiring in the past.
Roughly a quarter of the population are 55 and over but they make up only 16 per cent of the total workforce. Although 83.2 per cent of people without a disability participate in the workforce, only 53.4 per cent of people with a disability do.

Employment rates of people over 55 drop off sharply, to only 12.7 per cent for people over 65. But in the past decade, the number of people over 45 who say they won’t retire before 70 has risen dramatically, from 8 per cent to 23 per cent, the ABS reports. “They expect to, they want to, but will they find jobs?” Ms Ryan said.

Governments want people to work for longer to ease the looming pressure on the budget as the proportion of the population over 65 swells. It is feared the age pension and health systems, which older people will rely on for longer than ever as longevity increases, will become too expensive for the shrinking workforce to fund through taxes.

The inquiry found Australian labour force participation rates for older people and people with disability remain “far too low” and lag behind comparable OECD countries. Even with a 7 per cent increase in the mature age labour force participation rate we would lag behind New Zealand, but the boost to GDP in 2022 would be about 1.4 per cent, or $25 billion, says the Grattan Institute.

Every public service job in Australia should have flexible working conditions and targets for employing older workers and people with disabilities, the inquiry recommends. Private employers should have to publicly report progress on hiring older workers and those with disabilities, with the role of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to be expanded to monitor diversity. A national action plan should be developed and federal cabinet should include a minister for longevity, it recommends.

Attorney-General George Brandis said the report was a “very, very important body of work” and a “milestone in public policy making”. The recommendations would be considered, Senator Brandis said at the launch earlier this month.

The inquiry heard the same excuses for age and disability discrimination as were once commonly used to justify gender discrimination, “with no basis of evidence for the stereotype”, Ms Ryan said. These include that older people or people with disabilities are “unreliable, too distracted by family responsibilities, can’t handle high-stress jobs or won’t be able to work at a high enough pace”.

“I believe that we need the same sort of cultural change in relation to older people and people with disability as we had to push for and finally achieve in relation to women,” said Ms Ryan, who pioneered the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 as minister assisting the prime minister on the status of women in the Hawke Labor government.

“It is not a niche problem. It is a major demographic fact and we need to deal with it as much as we did with women, but we don’t want it to take as long.”

After he turned 64, educator and consultant Raden Dunbar got a taste of the age discrimination he’d dished out to others when he was hiring in the past, he told the inquiry. As a recruiter, “I instinctively avoided hiring applicants who were older and more experienced than me – because of a concern that such people might be ‘difficult to handle’.”

“I now think that, out of self-interest, I didn’t want my own standing to be jeopardised by the presence of a much older, more experienced subordinate.” Over-qualified, too senior, or over-experienced for the position were the usual excuses made to unsuccessful older applicants. “I could also pretend that they would ‘waste the training investment’ in view of their purportedly shorter future working lives,” Mr Dunbar said.

Programs and subsidies to encourage employers to hire older or disabled workers are ineffective, the inquiry found. The lack of opportunities to gain new skills for mid-life workers from declining industries like manufacturing condemns many capable and experienced workers to “years of poverty on benefits”.

Ms Ryan said older workers are also vulnerable to rip-offs under the rorting that has plagued the vocational education and training industry. “We need to make sure that … training is linked to a skill shortage in the area that they can realistically be trained to fill, not just some private provider who is enrolling them in something with a fancy name,” she said.

The report does not argue for special treatment for older workers or people with disabilities. The best person for the job should always get it, Ms Ryan said.

Viktoria Rother, now 53, is now adding to her stack of degrees with a master’s of environmental management and sustainability online through the University of Newcastle. Employers “think that those of us who are over 40, our brains are atrophied and we can’t possibly learn anything new. I find it insulting,” she says. But she feels optimistic about her chances in a growing field. It is a “completely different and new career path for me because I think the government wants me to work until I am 103”, she says.

Source: SMH

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/overqualified-overexperienced-report-reveals-systemic-age-discrimination-20160512-gotn0p.html#ixzz48lWoflMq
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook