Ageism - alive and well and living in Australia

“But during my travels around Australia I have spoken to people who are out of work, doing less hours, or making do with jobs below their skill levels for no other reason than they have reached a certain age.”

A friend is a contractor and highly qualified business analyst, who has just passed her 60th birthday. She says that younger people on recruitment panels are often prejudiced against people significantly older than themselves. “This is a significant problem for anyone over 50 applying for jobs,” she says.

She is a smart, attractive woman, but says “I have walked into interviews when they have quite evidently been shocked to see me”.

“The government was the last refuge of older people in ICT,” she says. “Mature workers came to Canberra because they couldn’t compete, especially in the extreme youth culture of Melbourne.

“But the government works against itself, because it doesn’t understand the discrimination process. The Gershon ICT reforms, that decimated the contracting community in Canberra, coincided with increased numbers of older workers taking retirement packages and younger workers moving into senior roles where they are now responsible for making hiring decisions.

“There were many channels for mature workers in the government ICT industry. But once a younger person is appointed into a hiring position, that channel closes permanently. So the chance of employment for mature people in government is declining.

“In the private sector, my age was an issue 20 years ago,” she says. “But there were still opportunities in government. Now the government is starting to catch up! We need tougher laws against age discrimination; perhaps young people should not be allowed to do the hiring!”

She claims there are now moves in Canberra to increase the percentage of young people in IT, and these are coming from managers who are trying to squeeze out the 60 to 70-year-old group to “give the young people a chance”.

Another friend, in his early 50s, worked as a scribe on a government recruiting panel. When the panel members agreed that an applicant was too old, he carefully reminded them that age discrimination was against government policy. Almost immediately, he found that his contract had been cancelled.

Yet another acquaintance, a 50-year-old woman, skilled at using office software, tried to get a job in a large department store. She was told she hadn’t enough (recent) retail experience. “Mature women have difficulty using our high-tech cash registers,” she was told.

A project at the Australian Institute for Social Research at Adelaide University concluded that there was no doubt ageism is alive and well in Australia. In their report, Experience Works - the Mature Age Employment Challenge, commissioned by National Seniors Australia, researchers described it as a powerful force which persists as a major barrier to the participation of older workers in employment.

The Age Discrimination Act 2004 does provide mechanisms to challenge discrimination against older people, but researchers found that employees were mostly not aware of its existence while employers simply ignored it.