Power thinks that the proposed changes will spell the end of employer-provided benefits. Employers, he argues, will baulk at the cost of providing medical insurance to an ageing workforce. At the root of his anxiety is the assumption that older workers are prone to extended bouts of sickness. This sort of sweeping generalisation has no basis in fact. Quite conversely, a recent ONS survey showed that it is younger workers who are more prone to short-term sickness, an assessment corroborated by the 2005 Labour Market Trends report showing that sickness absence is lowest of all in workers employed over the state pension age.

The grim spectre raised by Power of a workforce “suffering from senile dementia” is scarcely more credible. Putting to one side the unlikelihood of most working age people suffering from this cruel disease of the very old, there is nothing in the proposed changes that would oblige an employer to retain somebody suffering from dementia if it prevented them from doing their job.

Power raises further objections to abolishing the DRA on the grounds that “every older person employed prevents a young person from getting a job”. This is a depressingly persistent myth that warrants swift refutation. The OECD’s seminal study ’Live Longer, Work Longer’ makes it clear that the whole idea of intergenerational trade-offs is fiction. This was amply demonstrated in the 1970s by the Job Release Scheme, which was an example of the three-card trick, trying to swap older workers for younger workers that failed miserably precisely because younger and older workers don’t do the same jobs very often.

Power might do well to heed the example of the US and Canada, two of the most productive economies in the world which have consigned age discrimination and mandatory retirement to the dustbin with no adverse consequences. Here, older workers do a good job, move on, transfer into other roles, or otherwise step down and act as mentors. This situation compares most favourably with the UK, where older people are a valuable but underused resource. We have every reason to expect, therefore, that the repeal of the DRA will provide a useful boost to the economy if employers respond appropriately to it.

Although TAEN welcomes the timely abolition of the DRA, it accepts that changes to employment law of this nature will inevitably raise concerns.
However, it is vital that the matter is addressed with reasoned, sensible, and well-researched discussion, not with straw-men and scare stories for which there is no evidence.
Chris Ball, Chief executive, TAEN - The Age and Employment Network