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Continued from previous page
Brains Versus Brawn
When it comes to retirement, the changing nature of
work couldn't be more relevant.
Novelli, 62, came from a family of steel workers
in Pittsburgh, and when that generation
retired, he says, they really retired. "I remember my Uncle
Andy coming home one day, putting down his lunch bucket,
and saying, 'That's it. I'm retired.' And he was." In those
days, Novelli said at the Wharton/AARP conference, it was
common for a young man to begin working alongside his
father in the wheat fields, the factory or in construction as
soon as he finished whatever schooling he was going to have—and to stay at that job throughout his adult life, like the
generation before him. "If you didn't die standing up—i.e.,
while you were still working—you were glad to retire, if
you could afford to," Novelli said. "The idea of the 'older
worker' in those days meant workers who were old before
their time."
But those days are not these days, Novelli says. The
proportion of the workforce involved in physical labor has
dropped, with less than two percent of American workers
today in agriculture and just 13 percent in manufacturing.
Most factory workers and machinists are more highly skilled
than their fathers, and their jobs involve using robots and
computers, not lifting, plowing or wielding heavy hammers.
"Brains and learned skills have dominated, if not completely
replaced, brawn and endurance," Novelli said. "More and
more, knowledge workers predominate."
Novelli maintains that since work has so fundamentally
changed, ideas about work must change accordingly. But
this change has been slow in coming, he says. Though older
workers are protected by the federal Age Discrimination in
Employment Act (ADEA), the law can't change societal attitudes
about age. "There are still employers and employees
who believe that some magic number, say, 65, signifies an
age when one should no longer work," Novelli says. "The
slow raising of the age for Social Security benefits to 67
doesn't necessarily undo the stereotype. But more and more,
America will come to believe that there is no fixed age for
retirement, that work is important to people and organizations,
and that age itself should not disqualify anyone from
being hired or discourage anyone from seeking work."
Other experts agree. Recent research reports in Harvard
Business Review and Public Policy & Aging Report call for an
end to the concept of retirement, arguing that the potentially
debilitating mass retirement of the baby boom generation
threatens to starve businesses of key
talent over the next decade. The idea
of retirement is outdated, write the
authors of an article called "It's Time
to Retire Retirement," and should be
"put out to pasture in favor of a more
flexible approach to ongoing work, one
that serves both employer and employee."
Retirement as we know it, they
point out, is a recent phenomenon
created during the Depression when
the government, unions and employers
were desperate to make room for
younger employees in the workforce.
Institutionalized retirement was born,
complete with social security and pension
plans.
And 80 percent of boomers plan
to work at least part time during their
retirement, an AARP/Roper Report
survey found. Many, after decades of
profligate spending and meager saving,
have to work. But most, like London,
are eager to keep learning, to stay engaged,
to avoid boredom and restlessness.
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