If I am too old to work, then teach me how to start my own business.

[KRISTINA JULIN-STRINGER]

In the past 20 or 30 years, western companies have benefited from the two big labour market trends: globalization, which has allowed them to take advantage of cheaper labour costs in other countries, and rapid technological progress, which has allowed them to replace humans with machines. Corporate profits have soared but human casualties have been heavy. Millions of people have lost their jobs and, lacking the skills that employers are ready to pay for, have unwillingly joined the hidden army of unemployed - living more or less permanently on benefits, giving rise to the ugly new term: “the underclass,” which describes those for whom society no longer has an obvious role.


How does feel to be a person who has “passed his/her sell-by-date”? We all age and grow old but somehow elderly people have a stigma: very few employers openly welcome them. It is a paradox of the modern society: it is as if the more you know the less likely it is that you will find an employer who is willing to pay for your skills and expertise. Recruitment agencies more or less openly admit that they do not put the cvs of elderly people in front of their clients.


Countless amounts of scientific data have proved that elderly people are as virile and dynamic as the younger generation. And they are more loyal than Y-generation. Why is it that being old is considered like modern day leprosy? Show grey hair and wrinkles on your face and you have become a pariah.


So, while companies talk the talk about corporate social responsibility, and publish reports advertising their sustainable business models and ethical trading practices, should companies be less tightfisted when they are getting rid of older employees? Should they be contributing more? Should they help people who struggle to find work due to their age to at least provide a helping hand so that older workers could start a business of their own? I think so.





©2009 Kristina Julin-Stringer