Retirement Reverse Discrimination

The Ontario Government has ended a great injustice today, they have ended legislated compulsory retirement. Yep now you can work till ya die. The logic of this reversal of discrimination, is classic liberalism; the rights of the individual over the group. And classic Liberalism.

Moments after the province approved the legislation, Ontario Labour Minister Steve Peters hailed it as an opportunity for workers, especially those who joined the workforce later in life, to continue to contribute to their families and the economy. “It’s a very historic day,” Peters said. “We’ve ended a great wrong in this province.”

They found that the law restricted individual choice. For shame. But in changing the law to meet the sacred rights of the individual they lost site of that other important value of classical liberalism, utilitarianism, the greater good.

The so called compulsorary retirement law while restricting the rights of some was for the greater good of the many. Which is why unions lobbied and won compulsorary retirement, because they knew that if the bosses had their way, they would work us till we died, or toss us out with no pensions in order to hire younger workers who will not earn a pension for years. The idea of compulsorary retirement is directly tied to pensions, and to corporations paying into those pensions.

The McGuinty Liberals capitualted to the business community, who having underfunded their pension plans in order to put their capital into the stock market, wanted the government to bail them out. The best way to do that was to up the age of retirement. Business have campaigned provincially and federally to turn the clock back on retirement.

Of course for academics, such as the one who challenged the law in Alberta and got it overturned, or managers and bosses and even journalists working into your seventies or eighties is a career choice. For those of us who do blue collar work, by the time we are 65 we beasts of burden are well willing to give up the work life for the cottage life and we deserve it.

But now our pensionable earnings, our ability to retire early, or to retire at 65 have been put at greater risk.

Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, warned that in years to come, employees can expect to work up to the age of 67 or beyond before they can access government benefits.

Samuelson also brushed aside assertions by the province that the law won’t undermine early retirement rights or existing pension plans.

“That’s crap,” Samuelson said. “I’ve been going to union meetings all my life . . . and I’ve never seen anybody stand up and demand that they work longer. People want to work less. They want to have a decent pension. That’s the debate we should be having.”

He pointed to the United States, where access to government benefits has been increased to age 67.

New Democrat critic Peter Kormos slammed the law for not resolving fears of under-funded pensions.

“This legislation . . . is going to result in employers reducing pension benefits for younger workers who have not yet become vested,” Kormos said.

“This is going to create some real iniquities and further worsen, heighten, aggravate the crisis in under-funding of pensions and levels of pension benefits.”

It’s expected that less than two per cent of Ontario’s 1.5 million people 65 and over would continue to work, Peters said.

So you change a progressive law, compulsorary retirement for less than 2% of the working population, hmmm thats the same number that represents the ruling class in Ontario. So 98% of the working population must be subjected to the opportunism and greed of the ultimate minority. So much for the idea of majority rule, or even the greatest benefit for the greatest number. The McGuinty Liberals are classic neo-liberals, not real liberals like Bentham and Mills.

Previous Pension Articles are Here and Here