Where’s the support for older workers in the workplace?

Have you been reading a fair bit about baby boomers lately? Have you noticed that these articles are written about baby boomers but very few are written by baby boomers? Well, I aim to change that! Will you join me?

Baby boomers, particularly baby boomer women, are a generation in crisis. For the lucky few couples who stayed married and kept their house equity and superannuation schemes intact, the future looks good. But for those who divorced or split assets, and for the women who were unable to accrue good superannuation payouts in the first place, the future can look bleak indeed.

There does not appear to be much research done into how assets are lost, but if you can imagine the odd divorce or two, maybe a sick parent or child, maybe increasing periods of unemployment and underemployment from about 40 to 65, maybe a bad investment here and there, or a workplace injury, and poof, where did it all go? Welfare arrangements force individuals to live on assets until they are lost – that is the way it works.

Increasing numbers of baby boomers are finding that the assets they managed to accrue up to middle age have been eroded to nothing over the ensuing years.

This would not be such a severe problem if we were able to work and earn at our potential in the years we have left; we would be able to sort something out of the mess, but it seems we have become the demographic that everyone loves to hate. Employers are allowed to discriminate against us with no fear of recrimination. It is fashionable to ridicule us in the press and media, and even, to a certain extent, in government reports. It is fashionable to misrepresent us as incompetent or foolish when we are potentially the most competent generation ever to walk this earth. Really? Well maybe not, but we are not silly either.

So, if others are set on misrepresenting us, we are the only people we can expect to present us as we really are.  We must start presenting ourselves as strong, intelligent, educated, skilled, technologically competent and a force to be reckoned with. We are a generation that has fought for the rights of others all of our lives. We are the reason women can sign contracts, and gays can come out of the closet, and immigrants cannot be discriminated against and supporting mothers get pensions. Now that we are the group facing discrimination in our own right, can we get our act together to fight for ourselves?

The Mature Age Workers Hub

The needs and perspectives of mature age workers are not represented in any current social infrastructure. We are the forgotten demographic, but I have a plan to change that.

My plan is for a network of mature age worker hubs that act both as think tanks exploring alternatives and as meeting places, where individuals experiencing workplace discrimination work together to solve individual and group employment challenges.

As a group, we need an infrastructure that supports us as an entirely new demographic. We need to take a fresh look at:

1. appropriate employment that suits mature age workers
2. appropriate welfare system that respects the skills and lifelong contribution of mature age workers
3. appropriate continuing education opportunities to enhance existing skills in addition to the current re-training of the inappropriately or inadequately skilled
4. appropriate community attitudes, including appropriate attitudes to health and age
5. appropriate retirement infrastructure including appropriate housing

I will be starting two hubs, one in Bendigo, Victoria, and one on-line hub. If you have 15 hours per week to spare and skills going begging, and would like to be part of the inaugural on-line hub and working party, please contact me, Christine Kent at [email protected].

Do you feel like there is enough support for older workers in the workplace? Tell us in the comments below.