I am not a number

A major piece of news in Scotland, published yesterday (see The Herald Scotland ), is that Glasgow City Council, for financial reasons, is looking to reduce its workforce by 4000 workers and will be seeking  to achieve much of this, initially at least, by a voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at the 3500 employees aged 50 plus.  

As a result of this, I was asked to appear on this morning’s edition of BBC Radio Scotland’s “Good Morning Scotland” to discuss some of the implications of this plan and the situation regarding older workers in general. Although the appearance was brief, any opportunity to re-iterate our concerns over such “initiatives” we see as very worthwhile.

It appears that the Council is concerned over whether this move is legal in age discrimination terms, and it is happy that it is, at least in its current form. While this may be so, it is certainly ageist, that is it reflects prejudicial attitudes towards older workers, stereotyping and the making of unwarranted age-based assumptions. It also emphasises employers’ pre-occupation, not with doing the best for their older employees but with not falling foul of the legislation.

As a response to its operational problems, in today’s environment the Council’s actions are crude, socially irresponsible and extremely unimaginative. It sees itself as able, with a little bit of sweetening, to wash its hands of the future well-being of large numbers of individuals and their families without considering the long term implications for these individuals in terms of future employment, financial well-being, health and feelings of self-worth, over a period which could easily stretch to 30 years, as living into one’s late eighties or nineties becomes a reasonable aspiration for the majority.

Some employees who “have their ducks in a row” will jump at the chance of pursuing other avenues, things they’ve planned for and saved for over many years. But many will be cast adrift without a paddle or a compass or an understanding of what they might be letting themselves in for. They don’t deserve this.

As today’s programme coincided with news of increased unemployment amongst the young the question was put that shouldn’t older workers give way to help younger ones? Firstly, those in their 50s, with all kinds of financial and family responsibilities, need employment as much as anyone else. Secondly, solving one injustice by creating another injustice does not seem a particularly intelligent way of moving things forward. Thirdly, research presented by the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggests that this is not a question of “young versus old” but of “skilled versus unskilled” and the removal of skilled and experienced older workers from the scene will not provide opportunities for the unskilled who form the main thrust of the problem at the younger end.

The loaves and fishes job market

Interesting news about a new service which enables organisations to sell the time of their staff.

Called StaffShare, http://www.staffshare.co.uk/home/index.html it allows organisations to register individuals, who could be under-utilised or at risk of redundancy, on a website offering their services on short- or medium-term secondment basis. Organisations interested in an employee, which will initially be restricted to charities and the voluntary sector, can then buy their services for the selected period through the website.

The scheme has been welcomed by the TUC with general secretary Brendan Barber commenting: “StaffShare is part of a new approach that is needed if we are to avoid the waste of talent and human tragedies that occur if companies rush prematurely into redundancies when conditions start to get tough. This will keep people in employment while allowing third sector organisations to draw on specialist expertise.”

StaffShare is a fully automated interactive system, which allows organisations to sell and buy the time of skilled professionals including, but not exclusive to Financial Controllers, HR Managers, Marketing Executives, IT Professionals, Web Designers and Grant Writers.

We think it’s a great idea and one that should be seized upon by all sectors in respect of all types and levels of jobs. It could, on a long-term basis, solve many of the problems of older workers and the gap which exists between our wants and needs for work (i.e. generally to work longer but on a more flexible basis) and those of employers (who want us, if at all, to work full-time and then retire – generally early).

But no doubt such a scheme would be beset with tax, pensions, health and safety and goodness knows what other bureaucratic issues which ultimately would strangle it in its infancy.

At the very least let’s hope this idea is only the start of a whole raft of recession inspired schemes about how to share out work and rewards more fairly and profitably for all. If this happened, and some were adopted, the recession could be ultimately a very good thing.

Discrimination against older workers

What appears to be a massive and unfair piece of potential discrimination seems to have slipped quietly under the wire last week. Recent CIPD/KPMG research released last Friday reported that older workers appear to be particularly at risk in terms of future anticipated redundancies.  One in five of the 721 UK organisations surveyed said they planned to take advantage of the rules which allow them to make workers aged over 65 redundant, without having to provide a business reason.

Okay, so legally they can – but what sort of businesses feel that it’s acceptable to make a whole category of workers redundant simply because of their age? Surely if it was race, gender or even younger age there would be a national outcry?  And, it begs the question of why these older workers are being employed by these organizations in the first place if their individual value is so negligible. It seems that the economic climate may be providing a convenient “excuse” for HR decisions that should be handled in another, better, way.

The only positive note is that this underlines just how important it is to abolish the mandatory retirement age so that people are judged according to their performance and contribution – as they should be at any age.

Good news and bad news about the ageing workforce

We were delighted to read recently that the Cabinet Office has announced plans to remove the mandatory retirement age across the Civil Service, thereby removing their ability to insist that employees retire at 65. This has happened ahead of a final decision in what is known as the “Heyday” case, a protracted legal challenge by Age Concern and its offshoot Heyday against the continuation of a national default retirement age. As we have reported in the past, the outcome of this will take some time to eventuate, with no guarantee of a positive outcome, so all independent action taken by employers to remove default retirement ages is most welcome.

A further piece of good news came with the announcement of an amendment to the Pensions Bill allowing hundreds of thousands more women to buy retrospective pensions years in order to boost their entitlement on retirement. Okay, it’s not a straightforward or an all-embracing panacea for women’s pensions problems, but at least a step in the right direction.

Regrettably our delight turned to dismay with the news, last week, (from a  CIPD/KPMG Labour Market Outlook ‘Redundancy Special’ report) that not only do more than a quarter of employers (26%) have contingency plans to make new or further redundancies in the next twelve months in addition to those already planned, but that almost one in five employers say that they are going to enforce the Government’s retirement age policy – which allows UK organisations to make workers over 65 redundant without having to provide a business reason for doing so – more vigorously.

Truly a case of two steps forward, and one terrible great stumble backwards.