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.

Have to agree with WmTrevor:
As a young man working through my holidays, to supplement a limited budget, I got a well paid job stacking 350lb bales of wool.
Heavy gut busting work that required two healthy and reasonably strong young men, working together, to accomplish!
By the morning tea break, myself and my companion were shaking with fatigue.
An older man, around 75, came up to us and explained, we were doing it all wrong, and that there was a better way, which he proceeded to demonstrate, ON HIS OWN.
That better way saw us building a stairway of bales and rolling the rest of the bales up them, using our knees to assist with the lifting process, which was then relatively easy.
There is simply no substitute for experience, regardless of the job description.
Had we been like some of today's university educated, know it all, young Turk employers, we would have told the old bloke to go take a flying french frankfurter.
We always lose when we undervalue experience!
Experience is worth much more than any piece of paper in untried, untested, unproven intellectual concepts?
By the way, the easiest way to recognize incompetence, is by the number of super competent assistants the incompetent surrounds him/herself with. [3 or more, a dead giveaway!] And always has someone else to blame, whenever mistakes are made!
Too many of today's employers have no relevant experience, and therefore have no concept of the work effort required, or the actual time needed to accomplish virtually any task.
As for older persons not being as savvy when it comes to technology, they can and do learn!
Their alleged slowness, more than compensated for, with their other life skills and people handling experience!
I remember a firm called Francklin's, who would not hire juniors.
They reasoned that the older more experienced senior, would make less mistakes, give better customer service, and more than offset any savings, with efficiency gains.
One notes, for the lifetime of Francklin's, they never had cause to regret or change that most pragmatic of employment policies!
Rhrosty.

Gerontophobia is the new sexism and racism. Why else would somebody write "The fact is, older people are not the same as younger people and there’s no reason why employers should not prefer younger." Men are not the same as women; whites supremacists are not the same as aboriginals; able bodied people are not the same as disabled. For goodness sake grow up.

Age is not, and should never be the issue any more than gender or race. It should be about knowledge, skills and aptitude and attitude - and who will do a good job and who will be of greatest value to the employer and society in general.

Yuyutsu
It’s a valid point that corporations are not natural persons and don’t presumptively have any moral right to be treated as such. But I don’t think it’s valid to conclude from that, that therefore government is justified in threatening to punish people for preferring to associate voluntarily with younger rather than older people, for two reasons.

First, all the legal benefits of incorporation could be achieved in effect by contract. The only exception is limitation of liability in tort (think Bhopal). To the extent that this governmental conferral of legal privilege to avoid liability is unjust – and I don’t see how anyone can avoid that conclusion – the remedy is to abolish it, not to add other misuses of power somewhere else.

Since the supposed wrong of preferring younger to older employees is in contract, and therefore is not dependent on the fact of incorporation, therefore there is no justification in restricting the rights of corporations to exercise such preferences since they could do it even if they weren’t incorporated.

Secondly, if it's wrong to exercise the human right of freedom of association in such a way as to prefer younger over older, then why only criminalise it in employment, or in corporations? Why not in all social relations? For example, if a young woman chooses her sexual partner on the basis of preferring a younger to an older man, shouldn't that be a criminal offence too? The absurd principle is the same throughout.

SHORT&SHARP
So why don't you employ them then? The issue is whether coercion is justified.

All
No-one has established anything wrong with preferring younger to older voluntary associations.

It is sad. Yes I have experienced this, for at least the last 10 to 15 years. I am now 65. I have not been accepted for a new job or given a promotion in my current workplace during that period. I kept trying and only gave up trying five years ago. It has been demoralising.

I'm working daily with younger people who have been promoted over me, and whose knowledge, skills and experience are far inferior to mine. Such is the wisdom of our younger managers here.

My sense of it: this sort of manager gets the employes that they want and that they deserve. They get poorer results and at times shocking failures as a result. The failures are brushed under the carpet and not spoken of, to save them from embarrassment.

I live with this awareness in my workplace daily. I work with such younger managers daily. I have no time for them, feel contempt rather; remain cordial and avoid personal interaction with them as much as reasonably possible.

Our workplace could be so much better than this, if not for age discrimination by young managers who are cleary terrified of ageing themselves and who inevitably will age themselves. With closed minds such as theirs, they may not necessarily; live in denial rather, as they do with their failures.

If there is any justice in it for me, it is that I cannot see this sort of manager ever enjoying old age.

in my early 30s, I did some work in Shepparton picking pears. In our crew, there was a bloke who'd come down from Qld, very tall and lean, didn't smoke, drink or gamble but who'd regularly pick the most bushels of any of us, then he'd go up to NSW picking apples before finally going back to Qld for the winter.

and he never once whinged about anything.

As Hanns Johst memorably (nearly) said, when I hear the words Human Rights, I release the safety on my Browning.

The problem with "Human Rights" is that they are a confection, created by people who have decided that the "real world" is something that they can idealize, and then invent, through a series of Conventions, Symposia, Conferences, Round-Tables and the like.

It isn't.

Life is what happens to ordinary people, every day. Some of it is tough to handle, and on very rare occasions it can be "unfair". But it cannot - should not - be legislated. Especially by a bunch of academics and lawyers whose understanding of business can be etched on the head of a pin, with room to spare.

That way lies tyranny.

I have been been running my own businesses for the last couple of decades. I have never age-discriminated, or practised any other form of discrimination in hiring competent people, in any of my businesses. If they are the best fit for the job, it doesn't matter to me whether they are young, old, male, female (or neither) First Fleeters, fresh off the boat, whatever.

But it has to be said, yes, I have tended to employ younger people. Not because of the stereotypes, but because they actually do apply themselves more thoroughly to the tasks, they are willing to learn - and learn, and learn - and most importantly, they identify themselves closely with the success of the business.

The day the government tells me whom I should employ, or gives me a hiring quota of men, women, old, young, black, white, straight, GLBTI or whatever, is the day I shall withdraw whatever is left of my capital, and put all my employees out on the streets.

Except they'd probably have the energy, nous and get-up-'n-go to buy out the businesses themselves, and make a cracking good go of it.

So true Pericles. The only thing that matters when I am employing anyone, is whether I prefer that person for the job.

It doesn't matter if I don't want someone because he/she has a moustache, & I don't like moustaches, or their voice is at a pitch I don't like, that is my choice, & no commissioner of anything is going to tell me to hire someone I don't chose.

I have found some young people, even if not highly qualified, quickly grow into a job & exceed your requirements. Some are so bone idle they are not worth the air they breathe. You do get fairly good at seeing which is which, with time.

I have also had some older men in particular who had high levels of previous employment, who were really happy to step back into a less demanding, & lower paying position, & quite a few women who wanted less hours than they had previously worked.

All of these were good value. I found that with experience I would get a feeling for an applicant, & this was more important than qualifications, or to some extent experience.

Personally I missed a couple of jobs because the employer thought I was too highly qualified, but was head hunted at 54, so I could not say age was a problem.

'...a new survey has revealed one in 10 bosses won't hire a worker older than 50'

As most people tend to give 'socially desirable' responses on surveys, it would be safe to say that A LOT more than one in 10 bosses would not hire a 50+ worker. It's just that only one in 10 will admit to it.

Anecdotal evidence about ageism in the workplace is HUGE. And it's a problem that will only get worse as governments yield to pressure to keep putting up the retirement/pension age.

'Two out of three workers aged between 55 and 64 said they had been turned down for a job, and 28 per cent had been refused a promotion.'

How dare they!

1 in 3 have never been turned down for a job and 72% never been refused a promotion? Wow!

Maybe it's the pompous 'I've been doing this since you were in nappies' attitude of entitlement that grates.

'older survey participants, particularly women, feel'
Hahahaha. Less said about that the better. Gotta love a survey about how people feel as a basis for doing anything. I 'feel' I am entitled to a top job on a great salary, and people are nasty for not giving to it to me.

Who really WOULD want someone who has this attitude any more than a Lazy Gen-Y.

I agree with Douglas and Pericles. Though it pains me to agree with a Pom who invented leg theory.

In my workplace there is nobody under 30 and more than half over 40 and even about a quarter over 50. Maybe we discriminate against young people. The owner is 70 after all

Spookily deja vu-ish... I've experienced workplaces like that.

"In my workplace there is nobody under 30 and more than half over 40 and even about a quarter over 50. Maybe we discriminate against young people. The owner is 70 after all"

Mind you, the numbers didn't refer to age, but to IQ.

my ideal..use is sorting garbage
so im aiming at being the rubbish collector..on lamb island

but how to connect with the big guy..to apply
but i got a plan..man..help make me explain it there

im..the perfect rubbish guy
let me give it a try

anyhow..things change
and as things change..we dis empower..those looting society

how may things change
by saying no..its over..your serving shareholders
by abusing householders..[govt works for main..street..not suburbia

well..the lamb roars
[lamb-island..is succeeding in secession
and will..have their own banking credits systems..just wasit and see

or help..make it happen
we do have alternatives..

anyhow
here is an example of non-violent change
never ever never..any but..ever passive..change..for cause of course

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6040&page=0

Anecdotal evidence suggests there is plenty of ageism in employment but the broadness of the stats bothers me.

1 in 10 employers! That does not tell us about how many jobs are impacted. Are they from a mostly even spread across industries and size of company or concentrated in some way that alter the equation. Is it 1 in 10 jobs open for recruitment not open to over 50's or a very different figure?

R0bert

I am an employer, and discriminate against all sorts of people, depending on the position vacant.

For heavy work, we need muscles, and will probably reject slightly built people, females, and the elderly. For positions dealing with the public, personality is more important, and the position might be better for a young woman. If experience is important, the older person may have an advantage.

Intelligence, and a pleasant personality are always required.

Running a small business is hard, and is made more difficult by a whole host of government regulations. The world is not a fair place - you can miss your ideal job for any number of reasons besides age.