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Ontario Will Stop Forcing Workers to Retire
By Richard Mackie, The Globe and Mail
January 29, 2004
Ontario is planning to end mandatory retirement for workers shortly after the legislature resumes sitting in March, according to sources in the Liberal government.
The Attorney-General's Ministry is working on legislation to reverse what is seen as discrimination against older workers under laws that allow companies and union contracts to force them to leave their jobs when they turn 65.
The legislation will be similar to a measure the Progressive Conservative government introduced last spring in its pre-election package.
The issue moved into the center of the political agendas in provinces where mandatory retirement still exists and in workplaces under federal jurisdiction. Prime Minister Paul Martin said last year that he is opposed to mandatory retirement. The City of Toronto is considering ending mandatory retirement for its 47,000 employees.
No law in Canada requires retirement at 65. But many workplaces mandate it through collective agreements or company policies, even if an employee wants to keep working.
Most provinces protect over-65 workers in their labor or human-rights legislation, but Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador and the federal government still allow it.
The Canadian Association of Retired Persons, which has 230,000 members in Ontario, is pushing for an end to mandatory retirement. It complains that 35 per cent of people over 65 live in poverty and that people often need to work to pay for food, housing, health care and transportation.
Within the Ontario government, Human Rights Commissioner Keith Norton pressed for an end to mandatory retirement for several years.
This month, he wrote to Attorney-General Michael Bryant and to John Gerretsen, minister responsible for seniors, asking that the government end it.
In his letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Globe and Mail, he notes that the Tory legislation would have amended the Ontario Human Rights Code to allow the commission to intervene for workers who are forced to retire.
"I . . . encourage you to . . . extend the protection of the Code to older workers and endow them with the freedom to choose when they want to retire rather than having that decision imposed on them," he says.
If the government fails to act, Mr. Norton warns in his letter, he will go back to using the commission to criticize the policy.
He notes that mandatory retirement is especially hard on women who left the labor force for several years to raise children and who, therefore, did not build up full pension benefits by age 65.
The Tory proposal to ban mandatory retirement received a warm welcome from employment lawyers and management consultants.
But they warned that the change would mean more rigorous performance-management measures if employers could no longer force employees out at age 65. They predicted that the biggest impact would be felt by people 62 to 64, with employers retaining the most highly regarded and productive employees while pushing out the less productive.
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