Same old attitudes don’t work

THE more things change the more they tediously and frustratingly remain the same.

Ministers are reported to be implementing a drive to get older people back to work and to persuade employers of their merits.

Thirty years ago I was doing just that, when I was a junior minister in the then Department of Employment.

I initiated a campaign to find Britain’s oldest full-time worker with the aim of sending a message to employers that if someone of 75 could still give satisfaction in a full-time job, then what was their problem with somebody 20 years younger?

So to find someone of 75 manifestly doing a good job was the aim but within a week I had to close the competition to anyone under 85!

In the end the oldest male worker was 94 and the oldest female worker, who was also still singing in her local choir, was 93.

Employers give various reasons for failing to take on older workers. They say older people will not stay as long with the company before retiring.

Once, when people tended to stay with the same employer all their lives, that might have held true but it is now a fact of life that people move around between employers, especially the young.

Indeed, because it is so hard to find work in later years, once an older person has he or she is far more likely to stay than a young person who may be seeking higher wages, moving to a different part of the country or whatever.

Then they say older people are more likely to become ill. That is entirely dependent on their health but what is a certainty is an older person won’t become pregnant and take a year’s maternity leave! In short, an older worker is a sound investment.