Older Workers, and Older Australians it’s time to unite!

“Older workers unite” Bernard Salt called loudly in this weekend’s Weekend Australian.  “”You have nothing to lose but your privileges”.

One of Australia’s most respected demographers has singled out your generation as the next major marginalised group that will have to stand up and fight for their rights.   According to Salt, there are more than 5.3 million Australians aged between 49 and 68, the boundaries of the Baby Boomer generation.  And those people are set to necessarily start one of the biggest fights for their rights since the womens’ movement and the gay rights movement.

The problem comes from the massive demographic swill that Governments throughout the world have tried hard to ignore for decades, gratefully grabbing the tax dollars from the high-earning, hard working generation that has forged cities and nations.  They have claimed those taxes and poured them into education, infrastructure and government with a complete neglect for the fact that one day these people would need to retire.  And they led people to believe that if they worked hard throughout their working lives that their government would be there to help them in their older years.

Bernard Salt talks with what sounds like insult about the problem…

“[There has been] a sacred social contract  between government and workers for a century: work and pay tax now and you’ll be supported in old age.  Well the time for that support has arrived.  However there has been a fine print caveat to this contract.  And that caveat says that workers and governments of the day are more than happy to support others in old age, just so long as there isn’t too many of them, that they’re not too demanding of services such as health and welfare and  they promise to drop dead within a reasonable timeframe from the point of retirement.”

And herein lies the problem.  The last generation prior had only 1.6million people in its band of ageing.  This generation has 5.3 million.  How could we have missed this up until now?

It is not as though the looming retirement surge has been unpredictable to governments.  They’ve been hungrily feeding off that very population’s earning capability for decades.  Why is it such a surprise that the income from them is drying up and the expectation of payback on the deal now becoming important.

The Australian Government only instigated a superannuation scheme in 1993, years too late for many people in this agegroup, as many of you will well know.  Now they expect that this generation will just work longer to save them the pain of recalibrating the economy and paying up to their side of the bargain, which they clearly can’t afford to do.

So the only other opportunity for Boomers to survive the changing environment is to stay in the workforce longer, and take up the space and income the world owes them.  But the workplaces aren’t prepared for this either.  Young people in our country have grown up in the technology revolution believing they move faster, much faster than those older than them, and that peoples’ value is limited from mid forties.  I see it every day, sadly.

It seems the only solution is to start an uprising, with the generation who really knows how to do this.  Older Australians need to show this country what they have to offer and make a difference to attitudes.  They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again.

Age discrimination needs to become a conversation that people get passionate about overcoming.  We need more older people in workplaces, bringing their maturity, leadership and capability into a mixed group of people who can together better help a business thrive.  It’s time we fought for a place in our society.  And I don’t doubt that baby boomers are the right group to do this.

We need more baby boomers proudly in media, and not afraid to stand up for their generation.  At the moment, many of the more mature presenters seem to try and pretend they are much younger to keep up with their 30-something colleagues.  They forget they are there to represent and APPEAL to the massive number of older people in their audience.

We need more baby boomers to stand up for their political rights and slow the conversations on paying maternity leave at the cost of lower pensions to a generation that never had super.

And finally, we need to ensure that future generations that no doubt will be larger again, never face such a situation where the promise and the delivery of Government are at such loggerheads.

So, are you read for the uprising?  Where do we start? 

How about we bring you all together… and get this movement started… fill out your details below if you are keen.