Well if I wasnt depressed before this will do the job!

I decided I would do a bit of digging around to day to find out what exactly the government were doing to help the older worker. There have been policy paper after policy paper and little real effort put into anything that would be an incentive to challenge the discrimination in the recruitment of workers.
I have never ever felt discriminated against because of age until recently in Australia (I work overseas also) but I am really disappointed at the attitudes here now.

This is compounded by the staff at places like centrelink and as I have said previously the Job service providers, the recruitment companies (these are definitely the worst offenders!!) and even the universities - where I have worked for the last 30 years.

The following link put the "icing on the very doomfilled cake"

http://www.aboutseniors.com.au/index.php/articles/category/world_of_work

the list of jobs from the older workers site indicates the level of value that we hold in the community#http://www.olderworkers.com.au/index.php You will note that the top job on this is a personal care worker and the assistant at Sizzlers!

It is certainly time we took some cohesive action and began to demand some sort of affirmative action from the government. All these reports and documents which are disseminated to suggest that the government are doing something are meaningless unless they are backed up by some incentive. You cant tell a 25 year old recruiter to start placing 50+ people in a job - it just doesnt work unless you giver her a reason to do so.

Please write to me if you are concerned about the situation and we can begin to make our voice heard. Let's not go down without a fight!

Remember this situation is often worse for women than many men. You may recall that women were simply not able to pay superannuation until much later and for those who were divorced many were left without a superannuation payout and many simply cannot retire.