The Government’s revised strategy for an ageing society Building a Society for all Ages has been published today. It comes as a statement from HM Government with Ministers from the Department for Work, and Pensions, the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government signing the foreword in addition to a separate introduction by Gordon Brown.
The new strategy includes a promise to bring forward to next year, the review of the National Default Retirement Age (NDRA). It will be recalled that the NDRA allows employers to retire people at 65 even when they would like to go on working. This was always an affront to older people, many of whom now choose to work longer if their employers allow them to do so.
The promise to bring the review forward is of course welcome news. Mandatory retirement has served the interests of neither individuals, employers nor the state and so long as it remains it will exact damage to organisations and pain to individuals. We should be aware however, that bringing forward the review will not mean that the CBI will lie down and give up.
On news of the Government’s decision to bring forward the review, Katja Hall, the CBI’s Director of HR Policy commented: “Having a default retirement age helps staff begin the process of deciding when it is right to retire, and helps firms plan ahead with more confidence.” Really? Some firms, Katja, only some!
She goes on, “At the moment, anyone can ask to work beyond the age of 65, and their employer must consider their request.” Talk about gloss! True, they must ‘consider’ what the employee asks but with absolutely no duty to give a considered response.
Ms Hall says that the CBI’s research “…shows 81 per cent of these requests are accepted; showing companies don’t want to lose good people, whatever their age.” I beg to differ. The question of whether one is allowed to work on or not is explained more by the policies of the employer than an objective appraisal of the worth of the individual. That’s what we learn from TAEN’s research.
So this ‘right to request’ is absolutely not about fairness and objective appraisal of an individual’s economic value to society. It is simply that some employers do this and others do that. On these matters, one’s future ability to earn a living depends. It is as arbitrary and random as that.
It is worth stressing too that in the survey of employers with and without mandatory retirement ages (MRAs), conducted by TAEN and the EFA, 64 per cent of employers operating an MRA, said that they believed it resulted in lost knowledge and talent to their organisation. Other responses call the veracity of the CBI’s arguments into question and undermine claims that the NDRA serves the needs of employers. (See the story in the News section of this website.)
Faced with these critical perceptions by HR managers and directors, the very people who really should know, you would expect organisations to be running a mile from mandatory retirement and welcoming the abolition of the NDRA. Not a bit of it. Even where they can see it is not achieving its main policy objectives, organisations seem happy to continue with an MRA. The CBI continues to be the cheer leader even though most of their usual friends seem to have joined the opposition. Something has to make them change!
Of course one recognises that employers are divided on the default retirement age, but these divisions are around a fault line of experience. Those employers who have, of their own volition, abandoned an MRA say that they can cope well without enforced leaving dates. Large majorities of this cohort of employers say that it does not cause problems with headroom for younger employees coming up in the organisation.
TAEN certainly agrees it is time to move on. If a review is the necessary precursor to outright abolition, the sooner it starts the better. However, there are many who would prefer to see the NDRA scrapped without more ado - and I am one of them.
By coincidence (perhaps) the application by Age Concern and Help the Aged for judicial review of the legality of the NDRA will be heard in the High Court this week. From a rather hasty throwing up of hands in despair following the European Court of Justice’s failure to turn the UK Government over in one fell swoop, legal opinion is now more inclined to see that the Government is going to find it hard to defend its corner.
Hence this is a good moment for the Government to recognise the need for a fast track to change. If the Government loses the case, it will be obliged to look again at the Age Regulations anyway and seek some appropriate modification with reasonable haste. If it wins … well if it wins we will continue to present our evidence and be interested to see the answers. Either way, 13th July, the eve of Bastille day, is a good day to offer an olive branch to age equality.