We are back to the icy blast and feverish activity for 2010!
So much is happening - one hardly knows where to start. The General Election is looming large and TAEN will be raising issues affecting the labour market for older workers. Announcements will follow, but open your Christmas letter writing sets in readiness!
With the economic indicators encouraging optimism, it will be interesting to see if the Government gets credit from the electorate. I am not normally given to predicting the future (with a name dangerously close to Crystal Ball, trust me; you wouldn’t want to earn a reputation!). But I feel the outcome could be a closer run thing than we had imagined.
The votes of senior workers (and would-be workers) will be crucial. It is up to us to make the politicians aware of how we feel and what we need.
The Equality Bill is one case in point. Now in its Committee stage in the House of Lords, it will offer important new protections around the provision of goods, facilities and services, where the rules against age discrimination do not currently apply. We certainly need it to be passed.
Baroness Turner of Camden, who has come to TAEN’s aid before, has put down an amendment giving the Secretary of State power to introduce regulations obliging employers with more than 250 employees to report age profiles of their workforces. Our briefing on the Bill may be of interest.
To those who say, “But surely we don’t really need legislation on an issue such as this?” I say, “We shouldn’t, but we do.”
Most employers don’t do this simplest of things. We know; we have been looking. And yet, without understanding employee functions and skills analysed according to age, how is an employer to understand the demographic risks their organisation faces? And without that, how are we to make a reality of the mantra, ‘extending working lives’?
Age profiling really should be the start point for any approach to age management. It would also help expose unfairness and discrimination against older people in work too. We will be watching with interest next week as the Bill is debated in Committee.
With the Barclays Tower’s lights twinkling in the pink sunrises these dark mornings of my hilly sorties in Greenwich Park, I am reminded of the Olympics, now only 18 months away.
The building (in Canary Wharf) is the home of LOCOG, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games. Greenwich Park is the somewhat controversial venue for the equestrian events.
TAEN is delighted to be talking to LOCOG about age diversity in their own staff and the broader community the Games will serve. The Games should, after all, be for everyone – we all agree on this. And it is good to talk to an organisation genuinely reaching out with this in mind.
My personal hobby horse is for a veterans’ event to stand alongside the main Games and the Paralympics. I mention it to anyone I think could be interested, but sadly the idea seems not to have caught hold.
I reason that veteran athletes can be great exemplars to all ages. Seeing 50, 60 or 70 year old athletes winning on the track, velodrome, etc, would surely inspire others to take up the vigorous physical exercise that is palpably good for them.
But at this time of the year, watching sporting events may be as far as one gets. My family forsook the Boxing Day family theatre trip for Kempton Park races, where the grey hair of jockey Ruby Walsh gave me confidence to punt on his mount Kauto Star. Luck always follows beginners, they say, but I put it down to backing experience every time!
To New Year’s football, where a seat at West Ham’s Upton Park was so close to the Visitors dug out that I picked up a glance of semi-recognition from Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger. The urbane Frenchman is another wonderful example of an older worker knowing his trade. I like the way he turns his back on the players from time to time - delegation and diplomacy are skills he has developed to a fine art!
This sporting talk tempts me to tip an outrageous roll up on older people in competitive events in 2010. What about Ruby Walsh and Kauto Star for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arsene Wenger and Arsenal for the premiership and – let me see, who would that leave for the General Election?