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Case shows duplicity and muddle of retirement law
• YOUR article about Jill Banerjee – the “face of Camden’s libraries” – points up well the series of weasel words and practices both of our local authority and the government itself in the muddled and fundamentally duplicitous state of retirement legislation (Forced to Retire: the librarian with four decades of loyal service, July 17).
On the one hand Camden is happy, when it suits the demands of its glossy brochures promoting the health of its libraries, to feature one of its best known librarians and, furthermore, to claim (in a piece of egregious double-speak drafted by its legal advisers) that the council “has a policy of working beyond the age of 65”.
On the other hand the same council not only actually attempts to get rid of Ms Banerjee but also tells us, with a kind of faux innocence (also drafted by the legal advisers) that this particular case was based on “strong business reasons”, while (conveniently) hiding behind purported confidentially in order to prevent us from knowing what these “strong reasons” are.
This nonsense is the inevitable consequence of the dog’s dinner that constitutes the present law on retirement age.
By failing to give any discernible rights to those aged 65 – save to go begging to their employers for goodwill – the “policy of working beyond 65” turns out to have little, if any, actual substance.
Like any other employer in the private and public sector, Camden can do exactly what it likes, leaving the fate of the working lives of people such as Ms Banerjee to be taken up and fought for by local community groups, supported by local newspapers like the New Journal.
Government and council apologists can claim that legislation is now coming to grips with demographic change, longer life expectancy, pensions crises, retirement policy, and age discrimination in the 21st century but the truth is that nothing whatsoever has changed.
This case demonstrates that all the law has done so far is to give local and national spokespersons a chance to engage in blowing hot air.
TOM SELWYN
former Chair of Camden Public Library Users’ Group, NW1
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