Discrimination, labour markets and the Labour Market Prospects of Older Workers: What Can a Legal Case Teach us?

As governments become increasingly concerned about the fiscal implications of the ageing population, labour market policies have sought to encourage mature workers to remain in the labour force. The ‘human capital’ discourses motivating these policies rest on the assumption that older workers armed with motivation and vocational skills will be able to return to fulfilling work. This paper uses the post-redundancy recruitment experiences of former Ansett Airlines flight attendants to develop a critique of these expectations. It suggests that policies to increase older workers’ labour market participation will not succeed while persistent socially constructed age- and gender- typing shape labour demand. The conclusion argues for policies sensitive to the institutional structures that shape employer preferences, the competitive rationality of discriminatory practices, and the irresolvable tension between workers’ human rights and employers’ property rights

Mature workers, training and using TLM frameworks

Mature workers have been at the centre of policies aimed at encouraging higher workforce participation, longer working life and enhanced savings for retirement. Low mature age workforce participation rates reflect labour market withdrawal in the face of multiple barriers to participation for many. Their apparent voluntary joblessness conceals the fact that mature workers endure longer periods of unemployment, discrimination, redundancy and other barriers to employment (hence the drift to \u27early retirement\u27). The policy dilemma is not just about addressing discrimination barriers, access to appropriate retraining or skills enhancement for mature workers, but what this tells us about lifelong learning as a means of managing and mitigating risk. The mismatch between work opportunities/skills shortages and the low education and skills base of many mature workers, means it is simplistic to think that working longer might be a short term way to address skills shortages; without an enormous investment in the current ageing cohort. Drawing on Transitional Labour Market (TLM) theory and European reform agendas, this article argues that the link between investment in lifelong education/ skills training and stronger labour market participation needs attention; not just for current cohorts of excluded or underemployed mature workers but to position strategically for future generations.<br /

Leukemia-related chromosomal loss detected in hematopoietic progenitor cells of benzene-exposed workers.

Benzene exposure causes acute myeloid leukemia and hematotoxicity, shown as suppression of mature blood and myeloid progenitor cell numbers. As the leukemia-related aneuploidies monosomy 7 and trisomy 8 previously had been detected in the mature peripheral blood cells of exposed workers, we hypothesized that benzene could cause leukemia through the induction of these aneuploidies in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. We measured loss and gain of chromosomes 7 and 8 by fluorescence in situ hybridization in interphase colony-forming unit-granulocyte-macrophage (CFU-GM) cells cultured from otherwise healthy benzene-exposed (n=28) and unexposed (n=14) workers. CFU-GM monosomy 7 and 8 levels (but not trisomy) were significantly increased in subjects exposed to benzene overall, compared with levels in the control subjects (P=0.0055 and P=0.0034, respectively). Levels of monosomy 7 and 8 were significantly increased in subjects exposed to &lt;10 p.p.m. (20%, P=0.0419 and 28%, P=0.0056, respectively) and ≥ 10 p.p.m. (48%, P=0.0045 and 32%, 0.0354) benzene, compared with controls, and significant exposure-response trends were detected (P(trend)=0.0033 and 0.0057). These data show that monosomies 7 and 8 are produced in a dose-dependent manner in the blood progenitor cells of workers exposed to benzene, and may be mechanistically relevant biomarkers of early effect for benzene and other leukemogens

Barriers to mature age employment: final report of the consultative forum on mature age participation

This report looks into&nbsp;barriers faced by mature age Australians in the workplace or looking for a job, and the development of recommendations to overcome these barriers. Increasing mature age labour force participation is a key strategy open to policy makers to address the economic implications of Australia’s ageing population. Encouragingly, Australia’s level of mature age employment compared to other OECD countries has improved considerably in the past decade. However there remains room for continued improvement, to enable the economy to fully benefit from the skills and experience offered by mature age workers. Improving mature age labour force participation is one of the key challenges identified for our economy in Australia to 2050: Future Challenges, the 2010 Intergenerational Report. In this context, in February 2010, the Australian Government established the Consultative Forum on Mature Age Participation as a vehicle to provide evidence-based advice on ways to overcome the barriers to employment participation confronting many mature age people. One key outcome of the Forum’s work has been the identification and measurement of 14 key barriers faced by mature age Australians in the workplace or looking for a job, and the development of recommendations to overcome these barriers—all of which are included in this report

Between-Firm Redistribution of Profit in Competitive Industries: Why Labor Market Policies May Not Work

Empirical studies document differences in firms' response to the introduction of various labor market policies. In particular, large and mature firms tend to participate more actively in targeted employment subsidy programs (under which firms receive subsidies for hiring disadvantaged workers). This paper offers an explanation for this phenomenon and argues that it might have important consequences for policy making. Namely, such behavior of firms may indicate that large and mature firms benefit from the introduction of a new subsidy program, while small and young firms incur indirect costs. In this case, the policy implicitly redistributes profit from young to mature firms and may discourage startups if the entry into the industry is competitive. The resulting decrease in the number of operating firms is likely to have a significant impact on the policy's outcomes. These effects become more pronounced as heterogeneity between young and mature firms increasesfirm dynamics, labor market policies

Young People, Skills and Cities

Young highly educated workers developed in the 70’s and 80’s a preference for working in larger cities. As a consequence highly educated young workers in 1990 were over-represented in cities, in spite of the lower wage premium they earned for working in crowded metropolitan areas if compared to their older colleagues. This can be an equilibrium only if young workers enjoy some benefits in cities and are willing to pay for them. In our model, the extra-benefit of working in cities is given by a dynamic externality of human capital. Agglomerations of educated workers arise endogenously, as workers are attracted to dense areas, which improve their learning from others. If the skills accumulated in cities are easily transferable, it is efficient for educated people to work in dense areas while they are young and move to less dense areas when they become mature workers. Once the ”learning period” is over, workers are attracted to smaller and less dense locations where there is less competition from other skilled workers and housing price is lower. Our model explains why young workers were attracted into large cities in the 70’s and 80’s: this was the era of increased flexibility, of the success of versatility rather than specificity of skills. Small firms thrived, and therefore the transferability of skills increased. The model also gives an account of why, once they accumulated their human capital, some of the workers moved to smaller towns.

Pay-as-you-go Social Security and the aging of America: an economic analysis

Because it is a mature pay-as-you-go retirement system, Social Security provides current and future workers with below-market returns. These workers bear the burden of the unfunded liability arising from windfall gains to past retirees. Alan D. Viard uses these principles to examine the effects of three demographic developments: the low birthrate since the baby boom ended in 1965, the impending retirement of the baby boomers, and the downward trend in old-age mortality. The low birthrate reduces Social Security’s long-run rate of return as the unfunded liability is spread across fewer workers. The boomers’ retirement does not pose a separate problem, but marks the end of the temporary gains provided by the high birthrate during the boom. Because the downward mortality trend does not change Social Security’s long-run rate of return or the number of workers across whom the unfunded liability can be spread, it need not change any worker’s burden. However, policy responses to the trend are likely to shift burdens from earlier generations to later ones.Social security

Narratives of Deservingness and the Institutional Youth of Immigrant Workers

This article speaks to the special issue’s goal of disrupting the deserving/undeserving immigrant narrative by critically examining eligibility criteria available under two arenas of relief for undocumented immigrants: 1) the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary deportation relief and work authorization for young adults who meet an educational requirement and other criteria, and 2) current and proposed pathways to legal status for those unauthorized immigrants who come forward to denounce workplace injustice, among other crimes. For each of these categories of “deserving migrants,” I illuminate the exclusionary nature each of these requirements, which pose challenges especially for those workers who have limited education. As such, I argue for the importance of an institutional perspective on youth. Specifically, I demonstrate how the educational criteria required by DACA privileges a select few individuals who have access to formal educational institutions as deserving, while ignoring other empowering but non-traditional models of worker education. I also examine those mechanisms that reward workers who come forward to contest employer abuse. These include the current U-Visa program, which opens a path to legal status for those select claimants who have been harmed by employer abuse and aid criminal investigations (e.g. Saucedo, 2010). In a similar vein, some advocates and legal scholars have proposed a pathway to citizenship for those workers involved in collective organizing (e.g. Gordon, 2007, 2011). I weigh the benefits and exclusivity of each pathway for addressing the precarity of the millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. In doing so, I highlight how institutions have unevenly incorporated immigrant workers, creating wide categories of vulnerability that go ignored. That is, demographically young immigrants are often privileged as deserving, as are those institutionally mature workers who have been successfully incorporated by civic organizations and legal bureaucracies. Meanwhile, institutionally young immigrants—those who have been excluded from these spaces—are framed as undeserving. As a result, rather than to see legal status as a pathway to incorporation, it is extended as a reward for those who have surpassed longstanding barriers