Introduction

There has been a substantial increase in research dealing with the various forms of what has been termed ‘precarious employment’ (Arnold and Bongiovi, 2013; Campbell and Price, 2016; Kalleberg, 2018; Prosser, 2016; Vosko, 2010). Guy Standing's book The Precariat (2011) drew attention to what he saw as the precarious employment situation of older people (among other population groups), arguing that inadequate pension provision had led many to take new insecure jobs in later life. Standing conceptualized precarity as a labour outcome, related to individuals being in precarious employment, rather than older workers feeling precarious in a psychological sense. He argued (2011, p 59) that while some may be dissatisfied with being in precarious jobs (so-called ‘groaners’), others might be perfectly happy with this situation (‘grinners’).

This chapter contributes to debates on precarity among older workers in two ways. First, it develops the concept of ‘ontological precarity’ as a means of describing the individual experience of anxiety arising from the everyday experience of precarious work. This builds on the work of scholars such as Millar (2017) and Worth (2016), who focus on precarity as a lived experience rather than solely as a labour outcome. Second, it develops a new theoretical framework for understanding ontological precarity, which extends the scope of enquiry beyond individuals’ labour market position in order to take account of their broader circumstances (Campbell and Burgess, 2018).

We argue that for a significant proportion of older workers, the financial pressure to work for longer, combined with limited alternative employment prospects, gives rise to a heightened sense of precarity. To understand this, it is crucial to locate older workers’ experiences of precarity within the context of a shifting ‘welfare state’ landscape; this includes rising State Pension ages and attempts to extend working lives (Grenier et al, 2017; Lain and Loretto, 2016). It is also important to take into account the fact that pressures to work longer are related to a decline in the financial support within households, a key change in recent years being the rise in the number of older people living alone (Office for National Statistics, 2017).

The theoretical model presented in this chapter identifies three intersecting ‘domains’ of precarity: precarious employment, precarious welfare states and precarious households. We suggest that older workers’ sense of ontological precarity stems from feeling ‘trapped’ by the varying interactions of precarity in these three domains.

Introduction

The UK's focus very much encapsulates the economic and moral imperatives to extend working lives outlined in Chapters One to Three. Against a background of population ageing and concerns over the funding of state pensions and elder-care costs, successive UK governments have clearly voiced an expectation of working longer. The discourse has changed over time, from reversing early retirement, to extending working lives, to, most recently, encouraging fuller working lives (DWP, 2014a; Altmann, 2015). However, the intention remains firmly focused on delaying permanent withdrawal from paid work. In the last 15 years, policy changes with impacts on later working lives have multiplied, but as Phillipson, Vickerstaff and Lain (2016) note: ‘Apart from the general expression of the desirability of encouraging people to delay retirement and extend their working lives, the many initiatives … cannot be said to have been part of a coordinated strategy.’ Gaining momentum, however, is the ‘common-sense’ view that as we live longer, we should work longer, coupled with increasing talk of intergenerational inequality. As a result, there is a growing tendency for public discussion of extending working lives to take a strong moral tone, placing an emphasis on the responsibility of older age groups to carry on in paid work to pay for their retirement.

There has been legislation prohibiting discrimination on grounds of age since 2006, followed by the subsequent abolition of a default retirement age in April 2011. The age of eligibility for the state old-age pension is rising to 67 and is set to increase further to 68 or possibly beyond while changes to benefit and pension regimes (to be discussed in detail later) have moved to discouraging early retirement or access to ill-health or disability pathways out of work. At the same time, there has also been some emphasis on active, supply-side, labour market policies that encourage or subsidise long-term economically inactive people back into work, such as making work pay through tax incentives. These policies are firmly situated in the neoliberal discourse of helping individuals to help themselves. Emphasis is placed on individuals’ responsibility, planning and choice:

Introduction

Governments across the Global North are facing the reality of ageing populations and ageing workforces. These demographic changes have resulted in a debate that, to a great extent, has described the ageing population as a challenge to welfare provision and benefits. The reasoning is that the tax base is shrinking as the majority of older workers leave the labour market too early, often before state pension age. The focus of debate and policy development for extending working life has therefore mainly been based on economic perspectives. This is different from, for example, the comprehensive and long-running political debate on the need for increased labour market participation among women, which argues that women's participation in working life is a matter of democracy, justice and improving the way in which the competence and resources in society are utilised, rather than as just an economic necessity (see, eg, Hernes, 1987). It is also clear that the debate on older people's extended participation in working life is not based on a social movement, such as the one putting forward demands for job opportunities for women. Rather, it is an issue raised and motivated largely by groups other than older workers themselves.

While the rates of older worker labour market participation vary considerably across countries (as discussed in Chapter One), there is a common response among international, European and national authorities that extending working lives by encouraging people to work for longer and delay retirement is a necessity for the foreseeable future (OECD, 2006, 2011; Munnell and Sass, 2008; Magnus, 2009; Vickerstaff, 2010). Further, a new era is needed in which assumptions about the desirability and acceptability of early retirement, which had become embedded in the later part of the 20th century, are replaced by a new willingness to work longer. A common national policy response to this scenario has been to propose or to raise the ages at which people are eligible to take their state pension, hoping thereby to nudge people to delay retirement (for a full discussion of policy responses, see Chapter Three).

The policy debate about extending working lives has, to a great extent, characterised older people as the problem. It is their patterns of participation in working life and decisions on retirement that are the focus, and, as such, the debate has depended on the use of categorical stereotypes.