Don't increase the aged pension age!

Donata believes the pension age should be lowered, not increased. She describes her last years in the workforce as being soul destroying, and she believes upcoming 50 plus workers are going to have a much harder time and may indeed end up working till they drop.

“If it were not for that magical date on my future calendar promising me a pension and relief from the never-ending stress of job hunting and contract work I would have gone crazy,” says Donata. “I lost what I naively considered to be a permanent job before I was 50 and since then, up until I reached the statutory retirement age, I joined masses of young people – most of whom were very well educated – vying for whatever job I could get.”

“I was lucky in one respect,” says Donata. “I had highly marketable skills and a wealth of working experience behind me. Many 50 plus women forced to seek paid employment by divorce or family financial difficulties have only their home management and mothering skills to offer – and, as one woman told me, these skills were routinely laughed at by recruiters (even though this particular woman could have run the country more successfully than all the politicians and bureaucrats put together).”

“Nevertheless, despite my advantages, I soon discovered that the pool of well educated young job seekers was so huge that it was a waste of time and energy applying for a position similar to the one I had lost,” says Donata. “Unfortunately, the same situation applied when I lowered my expectations.”

“The most humiliating aspect of this phase of my working life was being judged on my age – or, more particularly, my physical appearance in comparison to that of a young woman,” says Donata. “I had never been a raving beauty, but after being interviewed by several male panels I started to feel ugly.”

“Needless to say, the better jobs I had during this phase were with female bosses who wanted someone to do a job, not someone to ogle all day,” says Donata. “And another humiliation I faced was being seemingly ostracized by younger coworkers.”

“Previously, most of my friends and social life revolved around work, and it was very hurtful being excluded – even though I probably wouldn’t have wanted to go all night raving with them.”

“Although I have many reasons to be angry at ambitious, sassy young people – demanding as their right the type of job I worked many years to attain – I am on their side,” says Donata. “Whether you are at the top, the middle or the bottom rung of the working ladder your position needs to be vacated so that the next generation can move forward. It’s as simple as that.”

“Many times I felt guilty just for taking a short-term job that a younger person wanted,” says Donata, “and as the pool of unemployed young people gets deeper, resentment and guilt will drive a greater wedge between the generations than there is already – that’s not the sort of society I want to face when I get older.”

“No doubt, men and women in positions of relative power will fight tooth and nail to extend the statutory retirement age to 100 if they can – and will gain support from the government in this respect (no pensions to pay out),” says Donata, “but for the rest of us – for all of the above reasons, and many more that others have encountered – I think many will agree with me that retirement day was like being released from prison and it should have come at 55 not 65.”

Read more of Donata's story:

globalization scuppers ageing myth