Helping my daughter at newly joined senior school with a homework project for geography I was tasked with looking for internet history links to the local area. Despite its now ‘village’ status (which probably stretches the imagination of the most ardent estate agent!) this suburban nirvana was in fact originally a coal mining area set at the foot of the Pennines and deliberately populated to provide labour for the cotton mills and the local coal mining industry. Dig a bit deeper and it was commonplace for children as young as eight to work in the mills and by 12 many boys were fully fledged miners.
Needless to say the history of the labour movement is steeped in the battles to prevent and outlaw child labour and rightly so. It serves us well to remind those who detract from trade unions about our noble achievements.
Campaigning for age-determined protection mechanisms was part of history and should be part of our future. But it is how we apply these mechanisms which is crucial. It is right we do not have child labour. It is wrong we differentiate on minimum wage rates for younger workers. It is right we outlaw age discrimination. So superficially should the movement now support Harriet Harman’s attempts to abolish the default retirement age? The simple answer in my view is we should fight Harman on this one.
http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/hrreview-articles/diversity-equality/could-end-of-default-retirement-age-end-discrimination/5548
The default retirement age is there for two main reasons from a trade union perspective. One is to prevent unscrupulous employers avoiding pension arrangements – you don’t need a pension because we are not planning on you retiring just work until you drop. And secondly to prevent Government forcing people to work into retirement by letting them off the hook on paying a decent state pension. Poverty will force people back to work. Women ironically are the victims of poverty in retirement. Less time during working lives spent in full time employment and part time wages, with the added problem of historically discrimination on access to pension schemes, which still persist despite attempts to redress this through the courts, leaves women poorer in old age.
Whilst some may want the right to continue working post retirement age the current anti-age discrimination legislation seems to allow some degree of flexibility. But just taking a swipe at the default retirement age is not only a cop-out but removes one of the founding principles of our movement which is that we should not be forced to work ‘til we drop.
It’s a bit ironic that Harman’s dressed this announcement up as anti-discrimination and equalities based. Poverty in retirement is by and large gender biased with women coming out worse off. The rich who are not dependent on state pensions will gain a financial benefit through less taxation if, as it appears to the case, the hidden reason for this change would be to up the age at which state pension could be paid. So less tax liabilities on the super rich to meet the pension funding gap.
Let’s not be fooled by warm words. If we had relied on the warm words of ‘hard work and godliness’ from the Mill owners my daughter would now be in a cotton mill not getting an education.
Anna Rose
