Ageism and the labour process: towards a research agenda
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489710172079 |
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| Pages | 274-292 |
| Author | Ian Glover,Mohamed Branine |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
26,4
274
Ageism and the labour
process: towards a research
agenda
Ian Glover and Mohamed Branine
University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to make a case for researchers and writers in the labour
process tradition to pay more, and much more comprehensive, attention to the
phenomenon of ageism in work and employment.
In the section which follows we review some existing research and writing in
order to define the topic and problem, briefly explore its causes, contexts,
character, effects and possible future, and discuss some of the main ways in
which it has been studied. In the next section we explore the relevance of labour
process (LP) theory and research to the study of ageism in employment, and
begin to outline a tentative agenda for LP research into ageism. In the
conclusion we briefly summarize the main issues raised by the study of ageism
for that of labour processes, and link some of the points that we have made to
related management and personnel and human resource management research
and practice.
Ageism in work and employment
One of the paper’s authors recently saw a birthday card aimed at people aged
40. The front of it informed the projected recipient that he or she would soon be
respectable enough to own and drive a new set of “wheels”. A wheelchair for
invalids, often with a hood, was depicted inside the card. Some writers on age
discrimination, such as Bytheway[1] have argued that the production of such
birthday cards is offensive and even disturbing in some respects, and we
sympathize. Like Bytheway, however, we consider ourselves as being able to see
and take a joke, and more importantly to appreciate the huge complexity and
significance of the moral, economic and political issues raised by serious
thinking about age-related attitudes and behaviour. Also, like Bytheway, we
regard ageism as a problem which can work to the detriment of people of any
age, as we explain later.
An example of the significance of the phenomenon was a debate in a recent
issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported, in March 1997, in The
Scotsman newspaper[2]. A professor of health economics had argued that older
people should be discriminated against by those deciding on who should
receive medical treatment. NHS expenditure per person rose sharply after the
age of 65 and it was generally wrong for older people to receive a
disproportionate share of resources in order to live a little longer after having
Personnel Review, Vol. 26 No. 4,
1997, pp. 274-292. © MCB
University Press, 0048-3486
Ageism and the
labour process
275
led full lives, thereby denying “younger person[s] large benefits in order to
provide small ones for [themselves]”. This was a matter of older people needing
to “accept the inevitability of death … in the interests of fairness between the
generations” by making sacrifices (and “way”, one assumes) for the young.
However, in the same issue of the BMJ, a professor of clinical gerontology
argued that the version of age discrimination aimed at older people was based
on the erroneous belief that they have a lower social worth than the young and
that:
The only person who can put a value on a life is the person living it. We should not create, on
the basis of age or any other characteristic over which individuals have no control, an
underclass whose lives and well being are deemed not worth spending money on.
The Scotsman’s journalist contextualized those arguments by referring to
points being made by the charity Age Concern about how a fifth of coronary
care units in the UK operated age-related admissions policies and about how
women over 65 were not invited for routine breast screening for cancer. In both
instances, of heart disease and cancer, people over 65 were more at risk than
other people, and equity in health care was being eroded deliberately because
resources were apparently inadequate.
The main relevance of these examples is their value in suggesting how
widely supported and deeply felt in the UK is the assumption that older people
have a duty to “make way” for younger ones. Cochrane[3] recently reported
some contents of an ecumenical report of April 1997 published by the Council of
Churches for Britain and Ireland. It criticized the main political parties for
abandoning the poor and unemployed in a scramble for middle-class votes and
accused the Conservative government of making official statistics on
unemployment very unreliable. It argued that people were increasingly aware
that UK unemployment figures did not cover all categories of people without
paid work, partly because they excluded “the disabled, people forced into
[‘early’] retirement [our emphasis], the sick and single parents”. Here, therefore,
there is fairly authoritative, if only implicit, recognition of the injustice and
ageism involved in at least some early retirement policies.
The nature and the subjects of ageism
Our use of the above examples is indicative of the ways in which the so-called
“greying” of labour forces in most societies is debated widely, sometimes in
slightly apocalyptic terms, by economists, journalists, medical academics,
politicians, sociologists and others. It is part of a broader phenomenon in the
developed and many developing societies, one of people living longer, healthier
and, in many respects, more vigorous lives than in the past. Life expectancy in
the UK and in North America has increased by around 30 years in the twentieth
century from just over 45 to just over 75. Against the pessimism of those who
deny medical treatment to people over 65, or who seek to do so, it is worth
noting that the most medically expensive years or months of the average life
have invariably been the last few ones, so that a profoundly negative
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