Opinion

‘I’m fed up with being told I’m too old to be working’

Dec 10, 2018

Joan is sick and tired of being told she's too old for the workforce. Source: Shutterstock

The last 12 months have been great for raising the voice of the over-60s community at Starts at 60, something we feel strongly about doing. During the next few weeks we are celebrating the blogs that resonated with readers the most throughout the year. This blog is one of our Top 30 blogs for 2018.

I am a pre-baby boomer and I have been told since I was 40 that I am too old to employ. I was a mature-age student and educated myself with no support or help of any sort from government — especially not Centrelink, which is supposed to support people to get back to work. In fact, they actually told me that I had to drop out of university if I found a job when I had spent six years and only had two months left to complete my undergraduate course.

Then I was told by Centrelink I was too old to get a job anyway so why was I bothering?

I have an undergraduate in early childhood education and primary teaching, and a postgraudate in teacher librarianship and as a teacher for those who are hearing impaired.

At every early childhood educator interview I went to I was interviewed by a panel of young mothers, who looked askance as to why I was there for an interview.

Embarrassing!

Yet at 40, I had a 10-year-old and had run a play centre for five years.

So, for the next 25-30 years I had many jobs such as teaching adult education at Swinburne, working with the intellectually disabled and challenged, teaching literacy and basic math to VCE students and math to hospitality students at Swinburne. I also did relief teaching at more schools and kindergartens than I can remember.

I have paid taxes all my life and I have paid a tax for my pension. I paid a private super fund, which the government had nothing to do with, never paid a cent into, and yet had complete control of it.

I have no love for the Liberal Government, which has manipulated my life and devalued me as a person because of my age.

And now, they are begging to get us back into the workforce because they have spent our pensions and for those of you who have a super fund it is usually not old enough to have accumulated enough to retire on and the taxes you paid throughout your working life are no longer there to claim.

What is there to like about a government that treats its senior citizens as second class until it behooves them to remember they don’t have the wherewithal to let us retire when we need to?

Some of us can work until we are 90, others will have health issues that will see them struggling and unable to afford the medical treatment they need. Yet, they are lumping us all into one basket.

Euthanasia will be the next issue; we will be labelled past our “use by” date.

Already I read comments from young people on this subject. One in particular said “I can’t wait until the greedy baby boomers die out. Then we might have a chance.”

Why can’t they make and take their own chances? That is what we had to do!