Week Starting : 27th October

Single Equality Body Announced

After several months of delay, the Government this week announced its intention to set up a new body which will be responsible for fighting discrimination and challenging inequality. Provisionally called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), it will bring together the work of the three existing equality commissions* and take responsibility for new laws outlawing workplace discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, religion or belief and age.

Making the announcement Patricia Hewitt (Secretary of State at the DTI and Minister for Women) said, “We are committed to providing opportunity for all and equality matters to everyone – it is not a minority concern. A successful society must make full use of the talents of all its members. But tackling discrimination in the 21st Century requires a joined-up approach that puts equality in the mainstream of concerns. As individuals, our identities are diverse, complex and multi-layered. People don’t just see themselves solely as a woman, or black, or gay and neither should our equality organisations. By bringing these bodies into one organisation we will make life much easier for individuals to get help and advice, especially when they are discriminated against at more than one level.”

A task force containing members reflecting different equality interests is being set up to advise on the governance and structure of the CEHR. The Government is promising a White Paper next Spring although it appears unlikely that the necessary legislation will go through in this Parliament.

TAEN welcomes the announcement of the CEHR. The devil, no doubt, will be in the details……

Incapacity To Work Pilot Schemes Begin

This week the DWP’s new Pathways To Work programme pilots - designed to help people on Incapacity Benefit (IB) get back into work - were officially launched.

Around 50% of the 2.7 million people on IB are aged over 50. Whilst 90% of those going onto IB express the desire to return to work, after 1 year only 60% manage to do so. Once on IB for a year the likelihood is the claimant will still be on it 7 years later. This effectively means that anyone going onto IB in their early 50s and not getting back to work in the first 12 months will effectively ‘retire’ from the workforce at that stage. This is a tremendous waste as the majority could do work of some kind – even if they couldn’t return to their previous occupation.

The Pathways To Work pilots have been designed to provide a complete package of support to individuals, including :-

• Making sure work pays – with a new Return To Work Credit of £40 a week payable for a year to those earning below £15,000 a year.
• New rehabilitation services – provided jointly by the NHS and Jobcentre Plus – to manage the conditions that most oftten stop people from working.
• Early support from a specially trained team of skilled personal advisors at Jobcentre Plus, including work-focused interviews. (TAEN has been involved in training the advisors)

Three areas are initially involved Bridgend, Renfrewshire and Derbyshire. A further four (East Lancashire, Essex, Gateshead & South Tyneside and Somerset) will start in April next year. All seven pilots will run until April 2006.

Explaining the purpose of the scheme, Andrew Smith, Secretary of State for Work & Pensions said “ This is not about forcing ill and disabled people into employment but giving people who can get back into work the support to do so.”

However, the scheme will be compulsory for all new IB claimants in the named areas and the first stages of the programme will be mandatory for the individuals concerned. Those already on IB in the pilot areas can also vounteer to particpate in the programme.

Portfolio Careers Not Easy According To Senior Executives

With all the talk of people wanting to – and needing to – work longer, the concept of older workers pursuing ‘portfolio careers’ has been increasingly mentioned. However, a survey of senior executives published this week reveals its not that easy.

There are, according to those surveyed, 3 main obstacles when it comes to securing work . A third said finding suitable roles was a problem, a quarter said adjusting to the uncertainty of whether work would be available was another and one in five said the constant need to network was a problem.

According to Garry Sharp, director of IDDAS – the organisation which carried out the survey, “I think the message that comes out…is that people have to be selective when they are building a portfolio career. Its not as easy as people think, it takes longer to establish and requires a great deal of planning, concerted networking and self-marketing.”

Changing Jobs In Later Life

Earlier this month CROW (Centre for Research into the Older Workforce based at the University of Surrey) was launched and published its first research report which looks at the issue of job change

Explaining the research, CROW’s Director, Professor Stephen McNair, said, “Our first project has been a national study of 5500 people, looking at their job changes, why they change, with what effects in terms of skills, responsibility and working time and what support they need to make these changes.

We wanted to find out whether older people are more or less mobile than younger people, why they choose to retire (or not) and what kinds of change in the workplace might make staying in work more attractive……

We want to understand how the talents of people over 50 can help overcome skills gaps and shortages, and the kinds of education and training which might help with this.”

Some of the key findings of the research are :-

• People want to work after retirement. More than half of all the people over 30 in work say they would like to work part-time after they formally retire. For men the number who say this increases as they get older.
• Increased responsibility and more skills are the commonest outcomes of job change for everyone under 60.
• Most people get no help to develop new skills: for 40% of all job changers, the change means more responsibility and/or more skills, but less than a third of these get any formal training to support this.
• Most people change jobs for positive reasons, up to around 60 (years of age), but external reasons (outside the control of the individual) become progressively more common with age.
• People with higher qualifications are more likely to change jobs, and more likely to do so for positive reasons rather than negative ones.
• Most people change jobs to develop their careers: up to the age of 60, the commonest reasons for changing jobs are career related. Only after 60 do more people say they want to reduce pressure
• Most people change jobs for work related reasons, not lifestyle ones: reasons like promotion, developing skills and redundancy are more common than lifestyle reasons like wanting more flexible hours, less stress or domestic responsibilities.
• People in large firms are more likely to make job changes, to do so for positive reasons, and to continue to do so into their 60s.

CROW (a TAEN member) is funded by SEEDA (South East England Development Agency). It has been established to investigate how people in their 50s and 60s in the region can be encouraged and helped to stay in, or return, to employment. Like the rest of the country, the South East has a growing proportion of people aged over 50 but unlike some other regions already has a relatively high number of over 50s in employment. However, there are a growing number of employers complaining of skills gaps and shortages and of unfilled vacancies. Older workers are recognised as an important potential pool of labour for the region.

Week Starting 20th October

Two Thirds Of Firms Have, Or Are Planning, Age Policies

In the same week that the ‘Age Matters’ consultation closed *, a survey by Cranfield School of Management has found that nearly a third of firms already have age policies and a third are planning to introduce them in the next 12 months. Of the remaining third: 20% say they don’t know when they will introduce them and 13% say they have no intention of introducing them.

Of the private and public sector employers surveyed, 67% were aware that the Government is introducing legislation, 57% said they avoid using age limits and age related words in job adverts, 55% claimed they do not use age as a basis for redundancy and 62% that training is based purely on skills needs.

The Minister for Pensions, Malcolm Wicks said the figures showed that ‘UK plc’ was starting to become increasingly aware of the need to remove ageism to allow firms to benefit from both older and younger workers.

Of course having a policy and implementing it are not the same thing. A recent IRS survey found that many organisations who had policies were not monitoring them to make sure they were being followed.

* Click here to see TAEN press release

Employment Rate For The Over 50s Up 2%

The employment rate of people aged 50 to state pension age has risen to 70.1% which means there are 224,000 more people in work than a year ago. The information is contained in a new set of key facts published by the Department of Work & Pensions:-

There are around 19.5 million people in the UK aged over 50, 42% of the adult population. The number is forecast to increase to 23.9 million by 2020.

6.1 million over 50s are in employment and since 1997 the employment rate for this age group has risen faster than the overall employment rate. It started from a much lower point and despite progress is still nearly 5% below that for the working age population as a whole.

The number of older workers out of work and claiming Jobseekers Allowance has gone up by .4% and claimants aged over 50 are much more likely to be long term unemployed than other groups with 29.2% claiming JSA for over 12 months compared to 14.9% for all of working age.

In a commentary on the figures, the report points out that given the relatively small number who are claiming JSA (150,400), any further increase in the employment rate of the over 50s will mean more action to tackle the level of economic inactivity amongst the age group or an increase in the effective age of retirement. Some 2.4 million people (27.5%) aged 50 to state pension age are classified as economically inactive.

Week Starting 13th October

Employment Figures Fall Slightly

The number of people in work has fallen by 9,000 over the past 3 months. However, there are still 233,000 more people in jobs than at the same time last year – 27.9 million people in total.

The number of people claiming benefits in August fell by 1,900 but jobs in manufacturing continued to decline and have fallen by 125,000 in the past 12 months.

The latest OECD figures show that the UK has the highest employment rate and lowest unemployment rate amongst the G7 group of major industrialised countries (which includes the U.S., France, Germany and Japan).

The number of permanent employees has increased by 117,000, whilst the number of temporary workers has dropped by 108,000 and there are 216,000 more self-employed people than a year ago.

The Office of National Statistic’s (ONS) Vacancy Survey estimates there were 626,000 unfilled vacancies in the economy as a whole in the 3 months to September 2003 - down 0.7% on the same period last year.

‘Age Matters’ Consultation Ends 20th October

Just a reminder that the DTI’s ‘Age Matters’ consultation period on the proposed age discrimination legislation ends on Monday 20th. You can either contribute to TAEN’s response by filling in our own questionnaire (click here) and sending it back to us, or given that time is short, you can download the Consultation documents from the Age Positive website (www.agepositive.gov.uk) and return it directly to the DTI.

70% of UK Business Enterprises Have No Employees

Some 2.6 million (70%) of the UK’s total 3.8 million business enterprises do not have any employees – they consist of sole proprietors, partnerships of self-employed owner-managers or have only an employee director.

According to an article in this month’s ONS Labour Market Trends - at the start of 2002 UK businesses employed 22.7 million people in total. The number of firms with employees had risen by 1.5% on 2001 but the total number of people employed in these 1.2 million firms had hardly changed.

Its quite an eye-opener to know there are just 7,000 UK businesses which employ more than 250 people and only 27,000 which employ 50–249 employees, the other 99% of businesses are small and employ fewer than 50 employees.

The figures exclude government and non-profit organisations.

Get ‘Switched On’

The over 55s are the most rapidly growing group of internet users in the UK and 90% more older people are using the net this year than last. But in order to encourage and help even more 50+ year olds to access the worldwide web, the BBC is running a special ‘SWITCHED ON’ fortnight on The Learning Zone on BBC2.

The programme provides an opportunity to :-

• Get familiar with the basic skills needed to get switched on.
• Get free and easy access to the latest expert advice and information on computers and the internet.
• Find out how the internet can open up a whole new world of opportunities.

The ‘SWITCHED ON’ series begins on Monday 20th October and runs through to Friday 31st October and will be transmitted between 5 – 6 a.m. Either set your alarm or your video recorder.

For further details log onto www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone

Week Starting 6th October

TAEN In Conference Mode.

This week sees TAEN involved with not one but two conferences. On the 7th we are jointly sponsoring a conference with the IPPR (Institute of Public Policy Research) and the Nuffield Foundation which considers the Government’s proposed age discrimination legislation. (see item below).

The Conference is entitled ‘Age Equality Comes of Age’ and speakers include Patricia Hewitt (Secretary of State at the DTI), Howard Davies (Employers Forum on Age), Brendan Barber (General Secretary, TUC), Tessa Harding (Help the Aged) and Sarah Spencer (IPPR).

On the 9th, we have our own Annual Conference entitled ‘Working For Longer – Choice or necessity?, Benefit or burden?’. The Conference is fully booked with delegates from member organisations across the UK. Amongst the speakers are John Edmonds (former General Secretary of the GMB union), Tim Watts (Chairman of Pertemps Recruitment Group), Alan Tuckett (Director of NIACE) and Alison O’Connell (Director of the Pensions Policy Institute).

Click here to see press release.

The Choice To Work After 65

The IPPR has published a new report to coincide with their Conference on the proposed age discrimination legislation(see item above). The report is also called ‘Age Equality Comes of Age’ and includes results of a
special poll conducted by ICM last month..

It found that nearly half (49%) of those questioned thought we should have the right to work as long as we want to and 30% wanted the right to work as long as employers think they are competent to do so. Only 3% supported a mandatory retirement age of 70.

9 out of 10 respondents said the proposed age discrimination legislation should provide legal protection against ageism as strong, or stronger, than the existing protection from racism or sexism.

At present the Government has ruled out including goods and services in the legislation, however 72% of those surveyed said the Government should not exempt public services – like the NHS – from the new law.

The report itself says that the age discrimination law as currently proposed will not do enough to challenge age stereotypes and enable people to continue working. As currently envisaged the law will put the burden on older people to ‘complain their way to equality’. The IPPR proposes that employers should have a duty to take active steps to promote age diversity as they do for ethnic minorities.

The report calls on the Government to:-

• Consult on extending the legislation to cover services.
• Include a duty on employers to promote age equality
• Make mandatory retirement ages unlawful – except in exceptional circumstances
• Provide clear guidance to employers and individuals before 2006

As both TAEN and the IPPR point out – at present too many people are denied the choice and opportunity to work after 50, let alone 65.