By one of those happy coincidences, labour leader Sid Ryan happened to be speaking at a picnic in Oshawa for retired members of the Canadian Auto Workers on June 7, the very day that Ontario's labour minister, Chris Bentley, announced that the government would introduce legislation to prohibit mandatory retirement.
Ryan, president of the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents some 200,000 government workers, strongly favours mandatory retirement.
According to Ryan, so do most of the retirees he spoke to at the auto workers' picnic.
As he put it in the Toronto Star: "I didn't meet a soul among the thousands in attendance who wished to still be in the plant, putting in long shifts on speeded-up production lines."
That's not surprising. Industrial assembly work, as anyone knows who's ever done it, is fast-paced, mind-numbingly repetitive, noisy and sometimes dangerous. In fact, most people who perform such jobs spend years dreaming of the day they can retire.
But what about doctors, lawyers, judges, academics and others whose work is intellectually rigorous and can improve with the passage of time and the accumulation of wisdom. There is no obvious reason why they should be subject to an arbitrary and government-mandated exit from the workplace.
By introducing legislation to end mandatory retirement, Ontario is recognizing this reality and playing catchup with many other jurisdictions. Manitoba did away with the practice in 1982. Alberta, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut, N.W.T., the Yukon and the federal government all followed Manitoba's lead. The United States, Australia and New Zealand have also abolished mandatory retirement.
But in Ontario, the unions and their legislative allies, the New Democrats, promise a fight to preserve the status quo. And as usual, the voices on the left are calling for expensive, publicly funded solutions. "Let's understand that the real debate should be about adequacy of pensions, not designing ways for people to have to work longer," said New Democrat Peter Kormos, who represents the riding of Niagara Centre.
"Instead of ending mandatory retirement," says Ryan, "the members of my union - and most working people - would rather see significant improvements to CPP, OAS and provincial income supplements."
Well, wouldn't we all. The question is: Who's going to pay for such improvements? At a time when Canada's income tax regime is onerous and out of line with our neighbours to the south, when consumers everywhere but Alberta pay retail sales taxes on goods and services, when CPP premiums are going through the roof, along with all sorts of other government fees and levies, there is absolutely no appetite for tax increases, even among the vaunted "working people" who would supposedly benefit.
But quite apart from the issues of pensions and taxation, there is the larger question of our labour markets and how they operate. Most Canadians would agree they work best with a minimum of red tape and government interference. Governments do not impose restrictions on when and how a person enters the labour force. They do not regulate movement within the market. Therefore, why do we need laws in place to tell us when it's time to leave, laws that blatantly discriminate against older people?
There is, in fact, every reason to believe that maximum flexibility will be absolutely essential in the next decade or so due to demographics. The Boomers are hitting retirement age and, according to most experts, an unprecedented number of people are preparing to leave the workforce in a short period of time. The broader public sector, with its generous pension plans, will likely be hit hardest. Municipalities, school boards, hospitals and government departments may well be looking for ways to keep people, rather than getting rid of them due to mandatory retirement.
Anecdotal evidence suggests something else about retirement. For many people, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Canadians are now retiring, on average, at age 61. Yet there are plenty of people who leave a long-time employer only to find their work-free days boring and unfulfilling. Before long, they are looking for something else to do and there are companies, such as Home Depot, that are happy to hire older workers for their experience and reliability.
These employers have realized that just because a person hits 60, or 65, doesn't mean they're history.
(D'Arcy Jenish can be reached at jenish@businessedge.ca)
