Incredible...

"Fifteen per cent said older workers "complain a lot'', and 11 per cent felt older workers were "grumpy or short-tempered''."

Have none of those surveyed ever met a teenager!

Older people are applying for the jobs so for them there is no discrimination against the probability of having to take orders from someone younger. Therefore it is resonable to conclude that it is entirely the fault of the 'younger bosses'.

My conclusion? Although, "A third of the business leaders surveyed reportedly said older workers did "not like being told what to do" by a younger person..." it is probable that two thirds of 'younger person' bosses are worried that the older employee is more likely to recognize incompetence when they see it.

One thought...

When you are about to spend up big, ask to be served by someone your age or older. If that's not possible take your business elsewhere.

Unless it's at a nursing home...

...and what's more older people are more literate and know how to spell 'reasonable' even if their arthritic fingers mistype and their poor eyesight didn't notice.

typical..fact laundering
in other words..9..out of ten will..hire older workers
but think..are they working..because they want to..or because they..have* to

sadly life is un-equal as well
but such..is balance..the majority..know,..the right things
yet the minority will..still control..overrule logic..with the small factoids/surveys/polls..

just to score the point..within
the deadline and the word count..cause it earn the crust
we do..as we have to..not that we want to..

now why..
that would make a greater tale.
put the humanity..back into..the stats

I write on older worker and job seeker issues. Age prejudice is very bad in SA, although the job market is in negative territory, making it hard for anyone to get a job. Older job seekers are at the end of the line. There will be some rocky road in the next 30 years as hours worked falls.

The only problem worse that older worker age prejudice is the sheer volume of young people looking for work. The truth is hidden in how the ABS reporting methodology but I would say real youth unemployment in SA must be over 20 percent.

The fatal flaw in this article is its assumption that older people are of equal value in the workplace as younger people. If it were true, no issue would ever have arisen.

It assumes that older people bring greater value to a business than employers generally recognise. But if this were true, why aren’t Ian Heathwood and Susan Ryan employing lots of old people, thus doing good at the same time as doing well? According to them, they could be making the extraordinary profits which are just waiting to be snapped up by employing all those undervalued older people.

“Employers need to strive for a balanced workplace.”

Why?

“A workplace skewed too heavily toward younger workers may lack the "experience" base needed to avoid making mistakes that experienced workers could identify in time.”

This assumes you know better what employers and customers want better than they do. You don’t.

“Society is obsessed with youth and younger attitudes …”

“Obsessed” implies that they are wrong. Who are you to say so, given that you don’t even believe what you’re saying?

“…while the Human Rights Commission survey shows older survey participants, particularly women, feel that retail settings are geared to the needs of younger consumers, despite the fact that the older market often has a greater discretionary spending power.”

So what?

Why don’t Ian Heathwood and the members of the HRC quit their jobs and start up businesses employing old people and gearing retail settings to the needs of older consumers with their greater discretionary spending?

“Employers should be open to the notion that over 50s workers have a lot to contribute…”

Why should they, when you yourself are not open to it?

The fact is, older people are not the same as younger people and there’s no reason why employers should not prefer younger.

There is nothing wrong with it and the use of force – the law – to criminalise employers and customers acting on their preferences violates the human right of freedom of association.

The author also doesn’t explain why age discrimination shouldn’t be illegal in *all* social relations.

How would you feel being employed by someone whose only reason to employ you is to avoid criminal prosecution, who eyes you all day like a tiger in a cage and wishes you fell dead that very moment?

Dear Jardine,

You produced excellent arguments and I agree with most, but I do have reservations about one:

I refer to the violation of the freedom of association.

When the employer is an individual, their freedom of association is sacred. Period.

But most employers are not individuals, most are companies. It is not compulsory for an individual or a group of individuals to incorporate themselves as a company - nothing prevents them from running a business and employing others in their individual capacity, yet they do freely choose to incorporate in order to receive special recognition and privileges from the government. Having done so, they have no right to complain about the government demanding a certain code of conduct in return. It may still be, from an economic point of view, a fatally stupid thing to impose such restrictions, but the moral argument of freedom of association does not hold when companies are involved.