On retirement

March 5th, 2009 § 4 comments

The Today programme on Radio 4 had a short discussion on the retirement age today about whether the compulsorary retirement age should be scrapped or raised or left as it is.

At the moment the complusorary retirement age is 65, although the employee can request to stay on, there is no obligation on behalf of the employing company.

I think that this is totally wrong. Why should there be a time, in this case an arbitrary decided age when someone can legally forced out of emploment?

As we get older bits and bobs start failing or but does that mean someone is not fit for employment?
If a person loses a hand or a leg, an employer cannot dismiss that person without first trying to find an alternative position within the company that a one handed/legged person can do. Why then should an employer be able to dismiss a 65 year old person just because they are 65 years old regardless of their ability to do the job?

A responsible employer would probably not do this, but they have the option. And this can’t be right.

As an aside, why are we talking about raising the retirement age at all? Shouldn’t we be trying to enable people to retire earlier? Don’t we spend spend enough of our lives working, without using the extra years we’re living to squeeze more out of us?

Tagged , ,

§ 4 Responses to On retirement"

  • I think that 5 years should be put on , make it 70.

    Working keeps the mind and body at peak performance.

    • Sim-O says:

      I’ve got no problem with people working as long as they want, until they drop dead for all I care, but it’s the fact that an employer can , call it what it is, fire someone with no compensation just because they have reached a certain age that is the problem.

      Wouldn’t it be nice, that as a society, we worked towards people not having to work well into their ‘twilight years’?

      Working keeps the mind and body at peak
      I would disagree. Being *active* keeps the mind and body in shape.

  • I to have a problem employer laying people off based on age but public pensions (and private for that matter) are fucked and with people getting older and no new people to back it all up, something has to change.

    And for me working does equal active but then I love my job.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What's this?

You are currently reading On retirement at Sim-O.

meta