Older men on average income targets of work discrimination

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Darin Sullivan in Main

MALE workers on average salaries are the biggest victims of age discrimination, a new study shows.
More than one-third of workers aged 50 and over who earn about $70,000 reported having experienced age-related discrimination, the survey of 500 workers revealed.
This was a much higher rate than reported by low-paid or high-paid workers.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The survey, for the Financial Services Council, which represents financial planners, found three in 10 of the surveyed workers aged 50 and over had suffered age discrimination.
The study’s author, Nicholas Wright, of Westfield Wright, said the problem of age discrimination was most stark among those in the “middle” of the Australian workforce, particularly white-collar men.
By far the most common form of age discrimination was to be sacked or made redundant before others, the study found.
Inflexible employer attitudes that saw white collar men as “full-time or nothing” contributed to the problems of unfair treatment and early retrenchment of older workers, the study says.
“If a 54-year-old male accountant requested to work three days a week it would probably be denied,” Mr Wright said. On the other hand, the study found some older men were unwilling to accept a drop in pay or status even as they expressed the desire for more flexible arrangements.
The study, Attitudes to Older Workers, also reports on interviews with 24 human resource managers and recruiters in small, medium and large businesses.
Their responses revealed that since the global financial crisis older workers had become more exposed because of cost. “Rather than keep older workers on or retrain them it is often far cheaper to simply retrench them,” the report says.
Also contributing to age discrimination was a “cult of youth” among managers and executives who were now mainly aged 30-50 and preferred to deal with people the same age or younger.
“Employer representatives … argued that older workers need to accept the reality that the days of a ‘job for life’ in one’s 50s and 60s are over – and embrace new possibilities in order to extend their working life,” the study says.
Mr Wright said business and government needed to consider ways that older workers could transition to a part-time role, as mentors or “elder statesmen”.
Figures released last week from the Bureau of Statistics revealed 18 per cent of unemployed people aged 45 and over said the main reason they had difficulty finding work was because employers considered them too old.