As some of you know, I play bridge competitively at bridge clubs; so, I know a lot of retired people. Strange because I don't think I am ever going to retire. The community out there might stop coming to see my shows and leave me with no choice, I suppose, but other than that I don't think I'm ever going to stop. I really love what I do even though I make very little money doing it.
Some people I know are looking forward to an early retirement because they have plans to involve themselves in some other kind of career, even in a volunteer or semi-professional way. One friend calls it 'getting paid to breath'. He can't wait.
But, in talking to most of my friends who are about seven or eight years older than me, all they want to do is retire so they can stop working. They hate their jobs. Been doing them now for about thirty some odd years and hate them. They are computer programmers, bank middle managers, insurance agents. Nice folks. Hard working folks. But absolutely, abysmally bored in their professional lives. And they're not really going to change their skills much in their late fifties unless they take the initiative to start their own businesses. This is a risky venture and most of these people, like most people, took the careful, safer road. It's not really in their nature to strike out on their own. And come on, they have mortgages, and kids going to uni, growing medical challenges, and credit card debt....
So, I am worried for how these folks might feel finding out that they now have to wait until age 67 to get their pensions. So, I wondered, is retirement good for you? Is an earlier retirement better?
Anecdotally, the folks I know who are retired (and, like I say, I know quite a few) seem to be having a great time. They play bridge, golf, tennis, take long walks or jog. They really get out there and seem healthy and vibrant. Most of them tell me they don't know how they used to have the time to work. But, interestingly, my anecdotal evidence is deeply skewed to folks who are engaged in the world. I don't have much anectodal on folks who don't thrive in retirement. So it's no help.
So what do the studies tell us? An Australian study, many years ago, suggested that people only live for about thirteen years following retirement, regardless of what age they retire. A recent, possibly more comprehensive study suggests that men (not women) suffer from retirement but it's not the retirement, necessarily, that's the problem. It's the involuntary cessation of work that kills. Women tend to continued the caregiving role as they age, a role that men of that generation have eschewed. So, regardless of what age of retirement or whether they were forced or not, women have a reason to get out of bed and men don't. If the man in question doesn't plan for retirement, then he may find himself with little meaningful work to do -- a gaping hole that gardening and jogging just doesn't fill. On the basis of this study, some governments are considering raising their retirement rates.
However, getting back to my friends: Most of them WANT to retire. They WANT OUT. And, in fact, one suggested that this generation should GET OUT. Get out of the way, he meant. That they should retire as early as they can to open up the way for the next generation to come forward. However, the economic view is that we want to keep labour force participation as high as possible to keep the economy going. As always, though, it won't be the middle managers who suffer (most of them will have work pensions built up over decades), it will be folks in heavy labour jobs -- jobs that have little, if any, pension; jobs that punish the body. For those folks, another two years may be too much.
So, who knows whether this new measure is good for Canada? But one thing I do wonder is this: If involuntary cessation of work is bad, is involuntary forced labour good?
Jacqui Burke is a freelance director, writer, and theatrical teacher living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is currently directing Wrong for Each Other for Encore Productions opening in April, Kidsplay 2012: The Mayan Prediction opening in June, and The Last Five Years for TOKL Productions opening in July. She is, also, serializing The Pretender, her first novel, online at http://thepretender-amarcienoelnovel.blogspot.ca/.
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"If involuntary cessation of work is bad, is involuntary forced labour good?"
ReplyDeleteGood question.
No.
And what I think is particularly unfair (speaking as someone who has done what she wanted for little-to-no money most of her life but who knows people who have kept at the nine-to-five slog out of a sense of duty or necessity) is to change the rules part way through the game.
Many people have stuck at jobs they didn't always love (or even like) because they had responsibilities, because it paid the mortgage or put the kids through university. They didn't take the chance of retraining for something more fun/interesting or starting their own business - or whatever more personally fulfilling option might have been out there. Because they didn't want to take the risk. The "deal with the devil" that they made with their job was that they would suffer though it - in return for the security that it offered. And that security included their pension.
I think it is a pretty shitty thing to do to folks who made their sacrifices and planned their lives according to a certain (contractually guaranteed) set of expectations to change the rules on them part way through the game, effectively saying, "Hey guys, guess what? You stuck with this crappy job because of the pension. But you're not going to get it! At least not all of it that you were promised. Because you see, we mismanaged the pension investments, the market went kinda wonky... well, a lot of things. Plus we've got jets to buy and jails to build. And, frankly, we just don't feel you're that important. So we're changing the rules. Good luck!"
Plus keeping senior employees in their jobs longer means new workers have to wait longer to enter the work force – because the jobs simply aren’t available. When this happens younger workers are unemployed, frustrated and angry. They lose opportunities to develop professionally. Apparently studies show that getting started professionally a few years later than they wanted leaves them running slightly behind for the rest of their careers. It doesn’t seem like a very forward-looking way for a government to plan to me…
I realize that pension plans may need to be rethought – particularly in the wake of the worldwide meltdown in the financial markets. But at the government level maybe we could have a few less fighter jets and a not so many new jails and slightly more investment in both the older and younger workers in our economy. That makes sense to me.
You are so right. I think it is the folks my age who have done all the 'right things' all along who will be most affected by this kind of reversal or change of policy. Apparently, there is a lot more of this kind of change on its way over the next ten years or so, if projections are any indication. Ah, me. It always dries up when I get there. :)
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