Business Today Web Exclusive

Age Discrimination

The UAE wants all expats above 60 working there to retire. Does this make sense?

Old ousted: What gives?

No. That's the answer. There's no polite way to put it. But since this idea has been thrown up by somebody, someone may have thought it worth discussing.

So here goes some guesswork. Somebody must have complained that youth unemployment is growing and needs to be curbed, whereupon someone might have suggested that vacancies be force-created by laying down 60 as the retirement age. Since this would obviously anger senior citizens (particularly those who argue that life effectively begins at 40), the easiest way out would be to restrict the rule to expatriates working in the Emirates.

Ghastly reasoning, all of it. To begin with, the image of white-maned expatriates playing havoc with the lives and limbs of youngsters is just that: a comic-book image. Not to be treated seriously. Second, unemployment is best tackled the classic way: by creating conditions for robust economic growth, and this includes a reasonable assurance to any value-generator (potentially, any biped with a brain) that he or she is free to generate value broadly so long as he or she is not trampling on anybody else's freedom (to protect which, there is The Law, equitably applicable to all by its very definition).

By most accounts, white-haired folk do indeed generate a lot of value without hurting others in the process. To insist on packing able-minded (and sometimes even bodied) people off from their jobs at 60 smacks of arbitrariness.

No less shocking is the distinction sought to be made between citizens and expatriates. It certainly cannot be the case that some white-haired folk turn senile at 60 while others do not, purely on account of geographical birth circumstances or genetic coding (the two factors that continue to determine nationality since the times this modern concept was solidified by European colony-carving cartographers).

That makes it an issue of double discrimination. First, by age. And then, by nationality. This is bad news because economic growth results from the value generated by the optimal coming together of capital, labour (okay, skills), information and ideas --- regardless of the sources' places and dates of birth. And the focus, as ever, should be on economic growth. It's time for clarity.

Issue Contents Write to us Subscription Syndication