Older workers: Are we our own worst enemy?

Every day, it seems, I hear an older person say something that makes me cringe. The things they say make me cringe because they are making me, by the day, less employable. They say “ageist” things that even a younger person would not dare say, at least in public.

There was the older man who was running some classes in a Certificate IV in Small Business Management. This man drawled in his deliberate “old man” voice, about how slow he and others his age are with all things technical. He said this not once but repeatedly; it was his own little joke. In the end, I asked him to stop. Why? Because he is the same age as me, and I, and many thousands of mature age workers like me, are not slow with all things technical. Our careers have lock-stepped with the introduction of computerisation in the workforce and we are highly technically competent. There is a misperception that mature age people in the workforce are behind the times and hard to train in new ideas and new technology. It is a misperception, but he was actively contributing to the idea that it is true. He was making me, and many thousands like me, less employable. Can you imagine Dick Smith (69), or Bill Gates (58) saying that they are slow with all things technical?

Then, just this weekend, sitting next to me at the hairdresser’s, was the 60 something woman, whose husband is fully employed at a local TAFE at which many others of his age are being retrenched. She proudly claimed that they would have been OK with her husband being retrenched, as he had many better opportunities to go on to if he did leave TAFE. She thought that older workers should move aside for younger workers. She claimed that a man in his forties with a wife who doesn’t work, and children to support, should get a job over a mature age worker. I don’t agree. It is many years since the luxury of having a wife at home disappeared for most of us. Almost all of my female peers worked throughout their adult lives, taking 6 weeks off per child. A couple have two potential income earners in their household so they spread the risk of unemployment between two incomes. Their solution is for both to work so that even if one is retrenched, the other is bringing in an income. By contrast, vast numbers of mature age workers do not have partners and do not have recourse to another household income. Those in their forties have more than twenty years to recover from set-backs and make good. Those of us in our 60s do not. We need all the time we can get to get closer to a decent retirement income if we ever get to retire.

And, please, please, please, stop bracketing age with ill health. Many of us are in robust health and well and truly able to continue to perform the work we are doing. We do perhaps have more muscular skeletal problems, but for those of us who work with our brains, we can live with those. Did anyone see Mike Willesee in Bali introducing the lead-up to his interview with Mercedes Corby about Schapelle Corby? He is now in his 70s and he was mincing along stiffly, clearly having trouble walking. He has muscular skeletal problems, that is evident for anyone to see, but that has not stopped him for flying to Bali, hanging around for a few weeks there and doing the interview he is being paid, probably quite handsomely, to do. His evident health problems in no way detract from his ability to do his job. We so often hear that employers do not want to employ mature age people because they will cost more in sick leave payments. Did you know that mature age women have the lowest level of sick leave of all demographics? We cost less, not more!

Perhaps the worst of all is the “nanna moment.” Everyone, particularly everyone overworked and tired, which is most of the workforce, is going to have memory lapses. We are not all-approaching Alzheimer’s. In an era of learning and intellectual overload, we are just forgetting things that don’t matter much in favour of remembering things that do. Everyone does it, young and old alike.

So please, next time you hear yourself about to joke about being technologically incompetent, or about your “nanna moments”, or not being as able to work as hard as you used to work, spare a thought for those of us who must stay employed. We do not have the luxury of allowing ourselves to fall behind technologically, or to get sick, or to forget things that matter, and we certainly do not have the luxury to step aside so that younger people can have our jobs. No matter how much we would like to, we cannot “wind down” just yet. We must remain strong, intelligent and highly competent. So think of us while you are enjoying your retirement. You might be the last generation to do so.

How many of you are still working? Do you feel that older workers should be prioritised over younger workers?