Fighting Ageism

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Fighting Ageism

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ July 19, 2004 ⋅ Post a comment

ABC Compass program – Fighting Ageism Sunday July 11 2004

Summary: Today’s discrimination & prejudice against older workers forces a re-assessment of life, work, and priorities.

Story:

Intro Hello I’m Geraldine Doogue welcome to Compass. Which tonight asks us to consider whether a new form of systematic discrimination is rearing its ugly head more and more. We may not even recognise it in our midst because it’s so taken for granted. But then so it could be argued racism and sexism before the spotlight was turned on them. I’m talking about ageism, which many over 40 may have experienced in the workplace. Redundancies, retrenchments, sackings, restructures and outplacement have resulted in 1 in 4 workers over 40 said to be suffering from chronic unemployment. Now the people we’ll meet tonight were all highly qualified middle managers on six figure salaries who are convinced they became the victims of ageism. They’ve been forced to embrace new ideas about the role of work, themselves and their identity. A painful and sobering process, with reaching implications for us all.

……….

Narr: Every day over 700 Australians turn fifty. But with 42% of them without full time employment some may dismiss the very notion of happy birthdays. Ageism is believed to be the most important issue facing older workers and is more pervasive than many think, starting in some cases at just 35. In a commercial culture aimed at the young, the beautiful and the nimble, many of the over 40s are being relegated to the employment scrap heap, creating a pool of depressed and frustrated workers who fear for the future.

Sev Ozdowski – Human Rights Commissioner: It’s having enormous impact. It’s called quite often silent killer. It’s called the marriage breaker. It’s one of more difficult forms of discrimination to address, and mainly because it deals with our attitudes, it deals with culture. It requires a major education campaign for us to change attitudes. We are dealing with entrenched attitudes in this area, and it’s also very difficult to prove it.

Ross Gittins -Economics Columnist – The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age: I think it’s irrational, I think that older workers often have more going for them than younger workers do. But that’s part of the prejudice and the sort of fundamental economic thing that’s driving it is supply exceeds demand, let’s think of reasons not to bother wasting time checking people out.

Narr: Like it or not Australia has one of the world’s most rapidly ageing populations. By the year 2015, a third of the work force will be mature aged. But few organisations are taking positive steps to reflect the changing demographics. Surveys of Australian companies consistently reveal a reluctance to employ managers or senior executives over the age of 50.

Sol Encel – Emeritus Professor of Sociology: Well employers I think are just behaving like the public in general. Most people’s attitudes to ageism are expressed in maxims like you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We have at least about 75 years of evidence to show that that’s not true. But it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is, people still believe it. So employers for example are reluctant to invest in training programs for older workers because they believe they’re too difficult to train.

….

Narr: It’s well documented that men find paid work integral to their identity and sense of self worth. Unemployment comes as a major loss not only affecting their self esteem, but their ideas of status and value. Without work many men find no purpose for living.

Sol Encel- Emeritus Professor of Sociology: It has a devastating psychological impact. A lot of men who have been used to being bread winners find they can’t face their families because no in many cases they’re depending on their wives as bread winners. They can’t face their children, and they lose a lot of social contact. That’s a very important part of it. Work is a kind of social relationship which is very important for men in particular. And if they lose their jobs they lose their whole social framework, and this is particularly devastating.

Ross Gittins – Economics Columnist – The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age: One of the things that all this economic revolution, all this economic rationalism that we’ve seen doesn’t quite and doesn’t adequately take account of, is the fact that people gain a lot of their self identity, their satisfaction, their life satisfaction, their happiness out of their occupation and out of their work. And the people who run the country really ought to give more consideration to the fact that, when you knock people out of jobs because of some grand policy decision you do make them very very unhappy. And if as we’ve seen demonstrated repeatedly it’s not possible or it’s not easy for older people to immediately slot into some other position, which is what the economists assume will happen.

…..

Narr: For many older workers the frustration and anger at being regarded too old to attract employment brings profound psychological and health challenges.

Sev Ozdowski: What’s happening people get depressed. In the beginning they are quite optimistic, they think they will find a job. But as the time goes they lose their position and the family, they lose their position in their circle of friends. They are no longer successful, they are no longer having money. They are starting to have problems with their successful, they are no longer having money. They are starting to have problems with their marriage, and it’s very difficult for them.

…..

Narr: On the surface ageism should be one of the easiest forms of discrimination to address because unlike race, sex or disability, most people are likely to become mature-aged at some time in the future. So unless it’s addressed, we all stand to be the losers.

Sol Encel-Emeritus Professor of Sociology: Changing attitudes like that which are very firmly rooted in the fabric of social life are extraordinarily difficult to change. And they would require much more effort and therefore much more money than any government has yet been prepared to put into it. But ultimately I think governments will have no option but to try very hard to persuade employers to change their habits.

………

Outro and Postscript: Now unfortunately the Mature Workers Program seen in that story, that’ s been so successful in finding older workers jobs has had its funding axed by the NSW government and no longer exists.

Council on the Ageing National Seniors http://www.cota.org.au

National Advisory Committee on Ageing http://www.seniors.gov.au/nacoa/index.htm

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s “Human Rights of Older Australians”