Mature workers on the scrap heap

Eighteen months after Weekend Life revealed the crisis in mature unemployment, the Government is on the brink of concrete action, reports TIM WATKIN.

John Bulkeley glances over the top of his coffee cup at the people pounding past, rushing here and there on another busy Monday morning.

He takes another sip and shakes his head. He's got no job to rush to. It's not for a lack of trying, experience or skills. He's tall, fit and has an impressive CV.

Like tens of thousands of other unemployed New Zealanders over 45, Bulkeley's only failing is his age. He was laid off in his late 50s and, at 61, many employers think he's just too old.

Weekend Herald readers first met Bulkeley 18 months ago when he featured in an investigation into unemployment among mature workers. Bulkeley, had just turned 60 and had spent the past two years applying for close on 1000 jobs.

The Weekend Herald reported for the first time a social crisis hidden in the statistics: just under half of all New Zealanders in their 50s were in full-time work. The Government described the revelation as "a huge, complex problem" and promised action on what Employment Minister Steve Maharey called "a major policy issue".

That story prompted a string of job offers for Bulkeley, who had been a project manager through most of his career, one of which tapped into his decades of experience in the marine industry. A week after the story ran he started at Mt Wellington boat builders McMullen and Wing, working on a 35m motor yacht called Surprise.

Figures released this month from last year's census suggest Bulkeley was not alone among mature workers in finding a job. The proportion of New Zealanders in their 50s in full-time work has climbed from slightly less than 50 per cent in 1996 to 59 per cent last year.

Massey University history professor David Thomson, who first spotted the middle-aged unemployment, says that is a good sign but it's too soon to celebrate. Take a closer look at the data and his caution is understandable. Change the age group from 50-59 to 55-64 and the proportion in full-time work is just 45 per cent.

The sad fact is that tens of thousands of New Zealanders are finding it impossible to work right through to retirement age.

As New Zealanders enter the last 10 years of a typical working life, their opportunity to save is falling. At an age when their parents would have been at the peak of their earning power, many cannot even find full-time work. The rules have changed around them, even for those like Bulkeley who previously had job titles such as regional sales manager and even general manager.

As one employment researcher suggested in 1999, there is no longer a career plateau for older executives - "now the plateau is a narrow ledge".

What's more, research from Massey University shows that once mature workers are laid off or leave a job, they find it harder than ever to get back into work. In 1989 long-term unemployment (those who are registered as unemployed for more than six months) was roughly even across age groups. About 30 per cent of unemployed 20- to 24-year-olds and 45- to 54-year-olds were considered long-term unemployed.

But even then the Department of Labour warned the Government of the "troubling" news that "long-term unemployment among older people ... is growing more rapidly than is total registered unemployment".

By 2000, the percentage of long-term unemployed in the 45-54 group had risen to more than 45 per cent (see graphs).

Of course, both housewives and early retirees are counted in that figure, perhaps making it sound worse than it is. But not much worse. Divide the 55- to 64-year-olds by gender and you'll find only 60 per cent of men and 31 per cent of women in full-time work. The remainder can't all be housewives or part of the privileged group able to opt out of work early.

After starting work on Surprise, Bulkeley thought he had escaped the trap. But eight months after he began he got an unwelcome surprise of his own. Neither he nor his employers blame the other, but the project ended, the staff was restructured and Bulkeley found himself out of work again.

Shortly before his 61st birthday, like so many his age, he was again confronted with the poverty of the dole and the endless days of phone calls, applications and interviews. He was, he says, shattered.

J UDY MCGREGOR has never met John Bulkeley, but she knows his story better than most. The Massey University College of Business professor has heard it time and again. Late last year McGregor, former editor of the Auckland Star and Sunday News, completed Mature Job-seekers in New Zealand, the third and final part of research into mature workers. Based around surveys of 954 mature job-seekers, it scarily defines a mature worker as anyone over 40, in line with Work and Income New Zealand's definition. You used to be in your prime in your 40s - now you're sliding into obsolescence.

McGregor and co-researcher Lance Gray conclude that mature unemployment is creating serious social exclusion.

"While not often heard en masse, the voice of mature job-seekers in this study reveals anger, frustration, and increasing isolation," they write.

The authors asked the respondents for their feelings about unemployment and discovered a "powerful and perceptible loss of psychological well-being experienced by older people seeking work. This depth of feeling cannot be conveyed in any description of quantitative data or its analysis."

The responses ranged from shock but optimism to suicidal thoughts. Most common was a mixture of anger, shame and despair.

"I feel as though I'm not worth anything any more," said one.

"There's no joy in being unemployed and begging for a job to feed my family and pay [the] bills and a mortgage with the threat of losing your home ... " said another.

Many also expressed a feeling of failure and frustration at not being able to contribute to the community. McGregor says this country's work ethic adds guilt to the financial stress and isolation of being unemployed.

What came through loud and clear was the critical importance of helping people in the first four to six months after they have lost their job.

"People quite quickly lose confidence, lose motivation, their job-seeking behaviour drops off quite significantly over time," she says. "So if we have a society that's prepared to help people quickly after they lose a job, we're more likely to have success."

Bulkeley wrestled all these demons - waking up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding, struggling to keep the boredom at bay, agonising over how to survive on his $120.82 benefit each week.

"You end up losing your confidence," he says. "You end up pretty dismal."

Then he got a contract job at marine services company Babcock New Zealand. Bulkeley says they had "a bubble in their work requirement" and took him on to manage a fishing trawler refit. He worked 10-hour days, six days a week to get the work done on time. Another success, but on December 7 last year, he was back on the dole.

B ULKELEY is one of the lucky ones. As bad as it is for him, it's worse for those without specific skills.

McGregor and Gray quote a 2001 Treasury report spelling out the extent of the problem: "Treasury [acknowledges] that older unskilled men in particular represent the most disadvantaged employment group in New Zealand".

Bulkeley at least can operate a computer. He smiles dryly, recalling how he learned Word Perfect and Excel from a Norwegian computer manual while building a boat in the Arctic circle.

He had seen the danger of not staying up to date with technology and was determined it wouldn't happen to him. Those without such skills struggle even more.

But employers aren't always fair-minded when they close the door on older workers. Mature job-seekers often run into a wall of stereotypes - older people aren't flexible or productive, can't learn, don't have energy, have only a few years left, or will be too expensive - that have little connection to reality.

It's hard to measure how far ageism has spread. Because of the anti-age discrimination component of the Human Rights Act, employers seldom admit age is the reason they rejected an older worker's application.

Yet an Equal Employment Opportunities Trust survey in late 2000 of 243 recruitment consultants and human relations professionals found that 78 per cent believed older people would face discrimination when looking for work, well above disabled people (62 per cent), Maori (32 per cent) and gay men (27 per cent). When the respondents were asked what discrimination they had seen themselves, ageism topped the list, with 68 per cent.

Jane Fanselow, New Zealand director of the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association and Wellington manager of Adecco, says "on a daily basis we would face ageist statements from clients, something like 'we're a really vibrant, go-get-it sort of company and we're looking for someone who will fit in'. Or they'll say 'I don't want someone like my mother'."

The employers, of course, are doing nothing more than reflecting the mores of modern society and our glorification of everything youthful.

We worry about young people and fret about wasting potential and enthusiasm, as if those over 45 are devoid of those attributes.

That extends to unemployment. One reason mature unemployment continues to receive such little attention from the Government and media is, as McGregor and Gray write, because of "the almost implicit assumption that unemployment is primarily a youth issue".

Clearly, it is not.

B ULKELEY is a determined soul who says he'll never give up job-hunting. He can't afford to.

Typically, he spends his week making phone calls and sending emails. He finds it wearying, but persists.

"On the basis of keeping a glimmer of hope, I try to keep five or six applications current," he says. "This is from filling supermarket shelves, to customer service, to doing what I know I do best, which is project management."

Yet, despite his experience, after he lost his job at McMullen and Wing Bulkeley was told that if he didn't go on a JobTrack course his benefit would be stopped. The man who had applied for around 1000 jobs did as he was told and joined up to learn how to dress for interviews and design a CV.

He was also interviewed by Winz staff and given six pages of jobs the computer matched him with. Most were the kind of jobs he was already applying for.

"What was left was digging ditches, grave-digging, which I've done, laying pipes ... But I'm not 33, otherwise these are things I would have gone for. My talents are more in my head now than in my hands."

It was even suggested he could teach English in Korea, he laughs.

With a sudden hint of anger Bulkeley says Winz is hopeless for someone of his age. He even claims a staff member told him the agency simply wasn't designed to cope with people of his experience and qualifications.

"There's no recognition within Work and Income that you can be of an older age and can do a job," he says.

It's an issue that came through in the Massey research.

"Many older workers were clearly unhappy with Tops-type courses for older workers and generally regarded them as inappropriate," it says.

A comparison of the Winz programmes available to youth and mature workers is informative. For 18- to 24-year-olds, there are 4500 youth training places. They can join the Conservation or Youth Services Corps. In some centres they can use the one-stop shop for youth. Many regions also have designated youth case managers, alongside designated migrant and single-parent case managers.

There's no such thing as a mature case worker, no Mature Corps. Training for mature job-seekers amounts to three pilot programmes announced in the 2000 Budget. In Flaxmere, Nelson and Dunedin, 42 people received training.

If you're 40 or older and you walk into a Winz office, you're likely to find the cupboard bare. Spokeswoman Sally Ewer explains that each region looks at the type of people on the register and focuses its resources at the greatest numbers. Mature job-seekers, she says, don't often go to Winz for help. Judging by the lack of specialist assistance and the anecdotal evidence of how they're treated, that's hardly surprising.

Ewer concedes it's a vicious circle - mature workers don't turn up because there's little support, and there's little support because they don't turn up.

When you place the reality of Winz and mature unemployment alongside the Government's words it appears even worse. Successive governments have raised the pension age from 60 to 65 and urged us to continue working and save for our retirement. But they have known since the Department of Labour report in 1989 that long-term unemployment was a growing problem.

This Government has signed up to a Positive Ageing strategy that includes older people participating in the community in the ways they choose, eliminating ageism and promoting flexible work options among its goals.

It has seen the bubble of baby-boomers moving towards retirement and the vacuum behind it. It knows there will be fewer of us who are of working age. It has read the international reports saying employers will be under pressure to keep older staff.

Yet on the evidence, its employment agency is unprepared to handle the issue, to grapple with what its own minister called "a huge, complex problem".

A year and a half after Maharey promised action, what has he been doing to solve the problem?

The priority in the past 18 months, Maharey says, has been to lower the unemployment rate overall, and he's had some success. Mature job-seekers, like all others, will benefit from the growing employment rate.

He says mature unemployment has received lots of attention in the past 18 months, but that's mostly meant pilot programmes and studies.

"We've done a lot of work on the Work and Income side, but we would admit that what it's taught us is more about what we need to do than what we've succeeded in doing."

He concedes the Government's policies aren't yet balanced to take account of the needs of older job-seekers as well as the young. "I think we'd front to that and say we've got to do more."

That "more" will come in two forms: The Tertiary Education Reform Bill to be passed in June will bring a raft of changes to industry training. Maharey says locking in industry-based training is essential to prevent older workers losing their jobs in the first place.

Second, he says it's time for Winz to change its attitude to mature workers. Staff have to focus on "the demand side", working with employers to hire more older workers.

"We've got to change their minds. We've got to provide them with concrete support so they will hire older workers."

The support needed will be discussed on a case-by-case basis, but could involve job subsidies.

"I don't want more pilots. I don't want more thinking. I just want to be able to say to mature workers ... yes, things have got better."

Just two weeks ago Maharey and Winz management agreed on certain changes.

"In two months [if you're a mature worker entering a WINZ office] you'll feel yourself to be a priority person with a group of people who have a clear idea of what it takes to get an employer to hire you."

Bulkeley keeps plugging on. When he thinks about his 65th birthday and the long-withheld superannuation, it's not with any sense of anticipation or pleasure. He knows he can't afford to stop working then. He'll just carry on until he drops.

He had an interview last week - down to the last three. It's a permanent, full-time job. It could be just the break he needs. It could be that one in a thousand.

"I just want to get into a situation where I can be happy," he says.

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