Abolish Default Retirement Age, urges NIACE Monday, January 25, 2010 - 17:13

NIACE believes that the UK cannot afford to waste the talents of older workers as it emerges from recession.

This is the main message of its response to the Government's consultation on the default retirement age, and is clearly supported by the report from the Equality and Human Rights Commision (EHRC). However, this abolition needs to be linked to significant investment in training and careers guidance for people over 50 and not limited to younger people.

NIACE believes that the default retirement age should be abolished for three reasons:

• It is unfair. The default retirement age allows employers to dismiss people regardless of their capability or aspirations on the arbitrary basis of age. This contradicts the spirit of the law on equality and human rights;
• it damages the efficient management of the workforce, by removing productive workers and demotivating many in their last years before retirement; and
• it is inconsistent with Government policy to encourage people to remain longer in the workforce: to improve the economic dependency ratio and improve the health and wellbeing of the adult population.

Professor Stephen McNair from the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce at NIACE, said:

"On current retirement patterns, for the first time in human history, most people will soon be spending more than a third of their adult lives in healthy, potentially active, ‘retirement'. It is no longer a brief ‘holiday' after a long working life, but a major life-phase in its own right. Not only do we not know how to pay for such a large dependent population, we also have no clear understanding of the social contract between the individual and society in this life phase."      

We need to rethink later life careers, finding ways to make better use of the expertise and knowledge of older people

Professor Stephen McNair

"It is well established that most work is good for people's health and social engagement as well as their incomes. The UK Commission on Skills has shown that, as we move out of recession, the UK faces a labour shortfall of some five million vacancies in the next decade. There are not enough young people, and filling the gaps by immigration is politically unacceptable. We need older people to stay in work longer, and today's report confirms what our research has been showing for some years - that most older people would like to work longer, albeit on a more flexible basis. Making them retire at 60 or 65 is inefficient and unfair."

"But this is not simply a matter of allowing people to stay in work. We need to rethink later life careers, finding ways to make better use of the expertise and knowledge of older people, while allowing them to phase out of roles which they no longer aspire to, or are no longer physically fit for. This will call for more investment, by individuals, employers, and the state in training, to help manage these careers. Retirement, whether abrupt or phased, should be a matter of positive informed choice. When people feel a degree of control over their lives they are more likely to approach it positively, and to enjoy the outcomes, whatever they may be. The results will be better, for the economy, for society and for all of us as individuals."

The relationship between learning and the lifecourse was a major feature of the recent report of the National Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning (sponsored by NIACE). Its report, Learning through Life, argues that demographic change makes it important to reconsider education and training policy in a lifecourse perspective. It proposed that the current three phase model, which dominates public policy (with breaks at 18-22 and 60/65), should be replaced with a ‘four quarters' model (divided at 25, 50 and 75) which would better reflect people's experience of life and work, and the needs of the economy.

Critically, this change would recognise the phase from 50-75 as one of continuing engagement with society, through paid and unpaid work, but with progressive disengagement from the paid economy, rather than a sharp break at a formal retirement age.