Peter Jackson column

Sep 7 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Supermarket chain Asda is no longer going to ask people their age when they apply for a job.

As part of its anti- discrimination policy, the group, which already employs more than 30,000 people aged over 50, will simply employ staff of all ages, from 16 to over 70.

It has no official retirement age and allows its employees to work until whatever age they like.

Its anti-ageism move anticipates new laws which come into force next month which will ban discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of age and which will cover recruitment, retention and training.

I think this is emphatically a good thing. I am firmly against age discrimination and the older I get, the stronger my views become. Although employers would do well to remember that the new rules do apply to the young as well as the old.

Not only is the anti-ageism legislation a good thing in itself in fighting an injustice, it also helps address a perceived social problem, namely our ageing population.

The argument is that a declining birth rate and increased life expectancy means proportionally fewer people of working age will be supporting more old people.

The answer to this, apart from wholesale immigration, is to have oldies stacking supermarket shelves.

But I wonder whether we might not be exaggerating this problem. Yes, there will be more old people, but there will also be fewer young people, and young people cost much more, and for much longer, than old people do.

To return to Asda, admirable though its stance is, I can't help feeling that it must surely still be pretty easy to guess a person's age even if they don't put it on the application form.

Imagine for instance, the recruiter faced with applications from, on the one hand, Kylie Canniebody with 23 GCSEs, 11 A-levels (all grade As), three Asbos and a degree in Pizza Delivery Management, and, on the other hand, Wilfred Gormenghast, who boasts four O-Levels and a City and Guilds.

Not only is it a pretty safe bet that Wilfred will be educated to a higher standard than Kylie, he is also clearly older.

However, I am sure that over time, as the Government's education reforms bed down, these differences will even out.