Elderly Employability

Sometimes it's easy to feel sympathetic about older people losing their jobs because of their age.  Particularly when they are skilled at what they do, enjoy their jobs and do a very good day's work.  Older people may not have quite the physical energy of younger people, but they have over the years more than proven themselves often enough in positions where experience and the ability to match that with the required skills can produce an outcome far outdistancing younger counterparts minus experience.

There are some occupations, however, where it just seems to make common sense that there is a time to retire.  And that time is directly related to an ageing body and an ageing brain.  When reaction times are slower, when the brain is not as alert, and brain-hand co-ordination is lacking.  And when exhaustion due to long hours takes its toll.  Above all, when the occupation is one where the working operator's skills and knowledge are balanced against the fact that his/her decisions and reaction times will have repercussions beyond just his own well-being.

As, for example, for the responsible and knowledgeable position of an experienced airlines pilot.  Retired Air Canada pilots George Vilven and Robert Kelley had appealed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that their human rights under the Constitution were harmed as a result of contractual provisions forcing Air Canada pilots into retirement at age 60.

Some individuals are relatively 'young' at sixty, others are not - that's part of what makes them individuals.  Those whose reaction time and physical response has been slowed by the years may not realize just how heavily they have been impacted by the years, so the general provision of retirement at age 60 seems reasonable enough.  That is, to the hordes of people who travel by air, and would appreciate doing it safely, in the hands of pilots who not only know their trade, but are capable of responding in an alert manner.

It's a tough one, to be sure.  This is an occupation where training and experience are vital, and where, the more flying hours attained, presumably the more skilled in experience and reaction one is.  Working against that is the creeping paralysis of age, when physical and mental assets are impaired in many people to some inconsiderable degree, but considerable enough, perhaps, to limit the usefulness of continuing to responsibly fly.

The Federal Court of Canada and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal both upheld rulings favouring the pilots' contention of unfairness in their employment codes.  The Federal Court of Appeal, however, citing a landmark 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding mandatory retirement for university teachers not being in violation of the Charter of Rights having set a precedent, turned down the pilots' appeal.

The federal government's omnibus bill striking down mandatory retirement for federal employees, following the example set by the provinces and territories will not apply to almost a million employees, and pilots are among them. It has been pointed out that the employment picture, with the aging of the country, and a looming shortage of workers, has altered circumstances, making employment of older people more attractive.

Highly skilled people will always be employable.  But in the case of airline pilots, of whom there appears to be an excess in the marketplace, it seems far wiser to recognize that skills deteriorate with age, and there are certain functions that are critical to the safe operation of a passenger jet that may increasingly be beyond the functional capability of older pilots.