Should 65 be the end or just new beginning for workers?

By VALERIE PAYN

The government of Ontario recently brought forth legislation to outlaw mandatory retirement. Like most of you, I thought mandatory retirement was a thing long in the past, an approach to employment from a much more antiquated time. I was wrong.

Knowing that mandatory retirement is still bantered around, it begs the question: Why would any company force workers to retire at age 65?

The argument in favour of eliminating mandatory retirement revolves around a new reality: People aged 65 today are in better health and are far "younger" in spirit, mind and body than are their counterparts from 20 or even 10 years ago.

In other words, people should be able to keep working past 65 if they wish, simply because they can. After all, we are going to need some of these folks to be our executives, doctors and warehouse supervisors.

We aren.t doing them a favour by eliminating mandatory retirement; they.re doing us - their employers, co-workers and employees - a favour by allowing us continued access to their expertise, creativity and institutional memory.

In the 1980s, the front-end baby boomers were well on their way up the corporate ladder. At that time, the concern was that these upwardly mobile men and women were blocking the career path of all those who would follow. The front-end boomers were those born between 1947 and the mid-50s and while their numbers were large, the largest birth years followed from 1959 to 1961.

This huge group of young people was looking at a very bleak future - or so we thought.

The older boomers were deemed to have taken all the good jobs and, because of their relative youth, were not intending to go anywhere soon. This made for a politically acceptable argument for mandatory retirement. It was not that older people weren.t valued; it was that we needed to make room for the younger people to advance.

Somehow the economy expanded to include most of these young up-and-comers, both men and women, in greater numbers than in the past.

Twenty-five years later - and 25 years older - we are faced with a new problem: natural retirement. Now that the front-end boomers are in their mid- to late-50s and thinking of retirement, with the rest of their fellow boomers not far behind, how will we fill the cascade of skilled jobs left open by these men and women in the next 20 years with our much smaller post-boom workforce?

The Halifax Chamber of Commerce has, for a number of years, been touting the need for greater immigration to fill some of these positions. Traditionally, immigrants filled the jobs the domestic population did not want: cleaners, night security officers, cab drivers and the like. Today, that mosaic has changed. Now we are searching for doctors, engineers and business professors. But immigration isn't the ultimate solution for our impending employee shortage. We are lucky that much of the rest of the world wants to live and work in a country like Canada, but we are equally lucky that we have a healthy and youthful class of older workers who can give a whole new meaning to "senior citizen". Where "senior" once meant old, it now means experienced, wise and very productive.

I'm not suggesting that people not be allowed to retire at 65, or even 55. What I am asking is for employers to consider the implications of forcing this fairly small group of experienced workers to retire simply for reasons of chronological age.

Getting mandatory retirement eliminated in private companies does not take legislative change. It only requires that companies and organizations that have mandatory retirement in their collective agreements and employment contracts drop this clause.

Ontario had to change its Human Rights Act, as well as legislation, because the province.s act stated that one could not discriminate against persons between the ages of 18 and 65. This language made it possible and acceptable to "discriminate" against people over 65. Nova Scotia.s Human Rights Act has no such definition. More important - and this is at the centre of the entire mandatory retirement debate - the private sector should not need to be told that it's counter-productive to eliminate an entire class of experienced workers just because of an outdated and inaccurate view of what happens when a person turns 65.

Before we start to panic about the impending worker shortage, remember this is a problem that will manifest itself over the next 20 years, not 20 months. There are three ways we can work together to solve any problems caused by the retiring baby boom: increase worker productivity, increase immigration, and don't force people to retire based on chronology. The first two are well underway and the third, I am optimistic, will fall in line soon.

Yet another good reason to honour your elders: We need them for a while yet.