Ageism is the most prevalent ‘ism’ today in the labour market. Even gender discrimination against women is rarer than ageism. The discrimination is particularly faced by people over 50, most of it committed by younger people in hiring positions. Such discrimination is often done because they regard the more experienced and knowledgeable candidates of higher age brackets as a potential threat to their own positions.
Discrimination based on age far surpasses those based on ethnicity, religion or region, and affects developed and developing societies alike. But its impact on the elderly in developing societies is far more deadly, both due to comparative dearth of opportunities and little or no social security for the aged in these societies.
Ageism is based on the misconception that stereotypes older people as being less energetic, less dedicated and less willing and able to learn new things. In reality, age brings, in most cases, persistence, greater openness to ideas, tolerance, higher degree of loyalty and dedication to work and the employers. They have more stamina — emotionally, if not physically — and those less fit would more readily adjust to their limitations and not be discouraged easily by impediments. Usually, they are more willing to learn, probably because they are past the age where their main criteria would be upward mobility or salary.
A misconception is that they are in the way of the young. Many work to support their young, who thereby get greater chance to develop themselves and enhance their education and skills. Their presence in offices is often a source of inspiration and opportunity for the younger folk to learn and gain from their experience. The only thing that goes against them probably is that they have fewer number of working years left.
How does one overcome this discrimination on grounds of age? The current infatuation with market mechanism means that little can be done about forcing employers to be fairer in their hiring practices. There is a need for laws protecting people from age-related discrimination, as there are in developed countries. The issue is closely related to the problem of providing greater social security to senior citizens. This would reduce their need to work and thus relieve pressure on the labour market. Besides, they could be provided some concessions in transport fares and medical facilities in state healthcare institutions. Their services could also be utilized to advantage, at least in those specific fields where age is no barrier to effective performance, such as in teaching.
Older people can be provided financial assistance to set up sustained private business. However, the policy trend in the last few years has been to make life more difficult for older people. The post-Nawaz government has continued its predecessors’ policy of implementing the IMF/WB agendas and laying off workers, particularly in higher age brackets and within working age, on a large-scale in banks, government and semi-government institutions.
Ironically, after curtailing personnel on the pretext of lack of pecuniary resources, the salaries of the remaining staff were increased considerably and people inducted on key posts on extravagant salaries. There have also been reemployment of well-connected, retired civil and military bureaucrats in government organizations.
If employers, including the government, want to hire more young people, they should be prepared to pay fairer wages to workers in general than they do now. The government has to be more generous in providing benefits to government pensioners and in instituting some kind of social security mechanism for people working in the private sector. The current Employees Old Age Benefits Scheme is inadequate and needs to be expanded in scope. The pension amount needs to be enhanced, possibly in association with insurance companies.
The government and its imported finance wizards have been harsh to senior citizens. They not only stopped implementation of some actions taken by the previous government, under which a few concessions were proposed for senior citizens, they treated their own pensioners with disdain while revising the salaries and perks of government servants, and civil and military bureaucracy. A generous raise in salaries contrasted with a stingy increase in pensions.
What does the recent generous five to 15 per cent increase mean in real terms? It translates into a ‘princely’ sum of Rs200 on a pension of, say, Rs4000. The older pensioners who have retired earlier are allowed a greater percentage, but since their pensions are much smaller, the actual increase is equally meagre. Our current financial wizards are continuing to axe the profits of the National Savings Schemes — which served as a kind of investment outlet for savings for the elderly and widows. A reasonable return on these schemes had the practical benefit of reducing pressure on the job market and on various state facilities. The returns have been brought down to almost half in the last three years, under the assumption that this would generate economic activity.
Neither a drastic decrease in returns on NSS, nor reduction in interest rates has led to greater economic activity so far. But their faith in textbook remedies and donor agencies’ prescriptions remains unshaken. However, a cosmetic ‘relief’ has been announced for ‘pensioners and widows’ in the form of one to two per cent ‘higher’ profit per annum on National Savings Schemes for window-dressing. Besides being of little solace to them, it would be difficult and impractical to implement and add to the complexity of the schemes.
