Older workers’ voices needed in debate

Older workers are the “missing voices” in the policy debate about later work and ageing labour markets and large-scale research capturing their perspectives is urgently needed to better inform policy responses, according to an international expert.

New Zealand’s former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner with the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, Professor Judy McGregor said that “precious little” was known about the actual working life experiences of older workers.

Current policy discussion assumed that all later work was a mark of positive ageing; that it enhanced self-esteem and self-efficacy of those undertaking it and that it was productive, energising and allowed for a better standard of living.

However, there were many older workers who may well find later work a negative experience, Professor McGregor said. “Working until they drop because they have to – a form of pensioner drudgery that needs to managed and better understood by employers and human resource professionals.”

She said decent time-series data and large-scale research capturing the narratives of older workers was needed “to urgently supplement” age management planning. “This would allow the missing voices to be heard and to lead policy responses.”

Professor McGregor, who is head of the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology, will discuss how New Zealand became an OECD leader in the area of longer paid working lives in an upcoming Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG) webinar.

In 2011 New Zealand’s employment rate for those aged 65 to 69 on the OECD older workers scorecard was 38.1 per cent compared to Australia’s 25.2 per cent.

Professor McGreger said there were several reasons why New Zealand had been successful in attracting and retaining older workers in paid work.

The first was the “legislative imperative of age discrimination legislation”. New Zealand was an early adopter of age as a ground of employment discrimination in equality legislation, via the New Zealand Human Rights Act 1993.

“This means that for the past 20 years employers have been unable to compulsorily retire people at the age of eligibility for New Zealand superannuation , which is 65  currently, although major political parties are talking of raising this to 67. In the 2013 Census, 130,000 New Zealanders aged 65 plus were in paid work and the number is growing.”

A second driver was cultural, both in terms of broad cultural norms and Indigenous cultural considerations, Professor McGregor said.

“New Zealand’s attachment to the principles of a ‘fair go’ has meant a relatively open-minded employer mindset to workers remaining in the workplace or being rehired after retirement or seeking new jobs.

“New Zealand’s Indigenous people, Maori, are proportionately more likely to be in the workforce than other ethnicities – 24 per cent compared to 16.6 per cent for Pakeha/European – largely because the concept of retirement is not in the thinking of many Maori elderly people.”

She said other factors included financial compulsion, specifically for women in lower paid, contingent work, because of marriage breakdowns, loss of financial assets in the global crisis or the inability to save for retirement.

Media perceptions

Professor McGregor, who is a former newspaper academic and has expertise in media sociology and media representation, will also discuss the stereotypes about older workers perpetuated by the media.

She said these needed to be challenged and confronted. “Older workers do not necessarily fall asleep at work, lag behind in computer skills or lack ambition when it comes to professional up-skilling and training.

“They are sick of being catastrophised as silver tsunamis or a dependency ratio crisis. They are people, vital in real and demographic terms to economic wellbeing and social cohesion,” she said.

The proposed new United Nations human rights convention advocating the rights of older people, which is being discussed, is overdue, she added.

Speaking alongside Professor McGregor will be Alison Monroe, president of the NSW Equal Employment Opportunity Practitioners’ Association and Rafal Chomik, senior research fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) at UNSW.

The AAG’s webinar, Work till you drop: The future of the labour force, takes place on 17 February at 1pm AEST. Australian Ageing Agenda is the media partner of the AAG.