Ms Mary Murphy:

The labour market is a lot more dynamic than the assumption that there are a fixed number of jobs with X number of employees and they are all just filtering through the same system to get them. In economics, there is what is known as the lump of labour fallacy where there is a pie with eight slices that can only be given to eight people, whereas what we actually find is much more dynamic. Studies do not find that greater employment of older workers leads to worse employment for younger workers. The idea that one particular demographic of society is blocking up the labour force and good jobs has also been used to justify excluding migrants and women from the workforce. The argument that we need to protect these jobs for certain cohorts of society is quite troubling and it is not borne out in research. The research does not back it.

Many people are being mandatorily retired on the basis of provisions in their contracts that were created 40 years ago. I would have a hard time believing that employers knew 40 years ago that younger workers were going to need those jobs 40 years down the line. I do not see that as being the justification. One does not know what situation the labour force and younger workers are going to be in.

As regards the assumption that if an older person has a job, it means that a younger person cannot get that job, why is it assumed that the younger person has a greater entitlement and the older worker has some obligation to make way? That cannot be what we think of as intergenerational fairness. Intergenerational fairness is a balancing act and we must take into consideration what it means if we are forcing older workers out of employment just to make way for younger workers.

One of the ways in which our labour force is changing is that people do not get a job and stay in it for 30 years. People are moving much more between different employers and workplaces. The general pattern of advancement into positions is changing. That also complicates the argument because younger workers may not be in the same workplace for more than five years anyway.