Give them a break

Parka SG

Extracted from The Straits Times 21st August 2003

Give them a break

BURIED in the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech was a plea to employers that ought really to be taken as a reprimand. Mr Goh Chok Tong said older workers should not be discriminated against if they were ready to accept lower pay and showed commitment to their new jobs. They should be given 'a fair chance to prove themselves', he said, '... but companies do not give them a second look.' Rejections are a self-evident truth, as borne out in media portraits of more of the middle-aged retrenched finding themselves unemployable despite having the requisite skills and much valued experience. Companies have a pro-forma defence: these workers cost more to hire; medical claims are higher; they lack mental agility in info-comm work. Mr Goh noted that companies also lament that these older workers will leave for better pay as soon as conditions improve. Such shorthand profiling will be harder to justify when CPF rates are brought down and variable wage components raised. These will filter in slowly. All told, this is the worst possible time for those on the wrong side of 50. If job creation does not pick up in the next six to nine months, the guillotine drop will progressively extend right up to the early-40s group. It does not seem a propitious time, either, in which to pick up the cudgels for them: this age-group is turning up more frequently in unemployment statistics and they are not the usual blue-collar semi-skilled, but middle management, managers and supervisors. Hirers have their pick of younger and cheaper substitutes.

But there are two reasons why the Government should keep up the pressure on employers, or to consider administrative intervention if discrimination persists. The first is a social distemper. As many above-40 layoffs are of sole bread-winners with mortgage and family obligations, the social tensions that a contrived unemployability generates can get unbearable. Downgrading to more modest accommodation is easier said than done. Snapshot reports keep cropping up in the media of marriages coming under strain. University ambitions for the children have to be reworked, even scaled down. It is a mercy that stress-related alcoholism and spousal violence are uncommon in Singaporean homes, but it should not be presumed that the anthropology carries a natural immunity against these pathologies. Second is the great store of experience and talent which companies are willing to forgo just to keep the wage bill manageable, when they give young oldies the shove or turn their backs on them. How much value-added and quality are lost to the economy in this way is unquantifiable, but loss there assuredly is. Singapore is in no position to take this lightly.

Companies are unsentimental: They exist to make money for proprietors and shareholders, and they usually do not owe the state a duty in capping social pressures. It is necessary for the Government to restate for their edification a bedrock fundamental concerning older workers. Their labour force participation is behind that of more developed economies such as South Korea, Japan and the United States. In a 1999 study on older workers published by the Manpower Ministry, one conclusion made was that if they kept working longer, it would moderate the 'economic and social burdens that an increasingly old-age dependency bears on the economically active population'. Raising the retirement age progressively to 67 is the enabling tool used. The orthodoxy is meant to survive all conditions, well past recessionary times.

[color=blue]I don't know much about age discrimination since I'm not in that age group nor am I working.

But reports that kept on appearing are not with reasons. It's a fact that age discrimination is practised, even our PM is talking about it.

The article mentioned something about older workers leaving when conditions improve. But aren't younger workers also looking for this type of opportunity too? Older workers maybe more loyal as younger workers are more prone to job hopping. In such tough times, I'm sure that everyone would appreciate the jobs they are holding.

Hiring older workers are more costly? Hiring younger workers without the relevant experience would require the company to spend time and money to train them.

Companies like to hire younger workers. That's true. But it's a universal truth that everyone like younger or newer things.

On the last line, companies doesn't really have the social responsiblity to hire older workers. They are money generating entities. Simple as that. They take no chances in minimizing cost and maximising revenues.