Older workers

7.30 Report : Older workers struggle to keep jobs:

"KERRY O'BRIEN: With an ageing population and fewer young people entering the work force, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are pitching the same message on one issue at least: early retirement is a luxury we can no longer afford. There's just one problem, though. How do you sell that message to major companies who are regularly showing the door to older, experienced workers and to the other companies who won't then employ them? The result: a growing pool of people who are underemployed. Well, as Mark Bannerman reports, the answers may not be all that complicated."

They are letting older workers go because they appear to cost more money. Well, let's see what happens. You cannot replace age and experience in a job. Maybe in a world where you don't care it won't be a problem having half experiences, green behind the ears workers. The young have a right to work but they also have a right to learn the job properly and that comes from working with older people. If businesses believe experience is replaceable, they will learn. Do you want a brand new surgeoun working on your quadruple bypass? Do you want someone who scraped through their exams? Well, never mind if they stress out and get it all wrong, we'll just put another new one on the team. Some jobs have to be grown into. Some jobs have a complicated set of protocols. Older workers will challenge the establishment because they know from experience that some things wont work. Maybe that's why you let them go. If you want to run things in an irregular way and you do not want people to question. How long will that keep things going? Experience is everything but innovation and flexabilty promote growth. A sound workforce has a mix of people and a positive workforce with couple age and inexperience because older people are aware they have so much they can hand on to new ones. To be divisive on age terms is counter productive.