City agency recognizes need for mature workers

By P.A.Sévigny, October 10th, 2012

As of last week, the city’s CEDEC followed up on last year’s initial Mature Workers Employability Report with a new survey in which it describes current hiring practices and what potential employers are looking for (and what they’re likely to get) when they decide to hire mature workers.
 During a well-attended meeting held in the Côte Des Neiges Community Center, Québec MNA Kathleen Weil joined federal MPs Hélène Leblanc, Tyrone Benskin and Isabelle Morin as they listened to what several labor experts had to say about employment opportunities for Montreal’s growing number of middle-aged Anglophone workers who are looking for work.
 On the whole, the new report is a
positive document full of statistics which confirm what every human resource executive knows to expect when they hire mature men and women to fill a given position. Aside from a high level of commitment, mature workers have a strong work ethic which leads to increased production and a stable work force. Apart from their own superior interpersonal skills, older workers are usually pleased to share their experience which is always an asset in any kind of successful enterprise.
”Mature workers are like a fine wine,” said CEDEC development coordinator Marianna Balakhnina. “They get better with age.”
CEDEC is officially known as the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation, and Balakhnina and her colleagues have spent the last three years studying the needs and challenges encountered by unemployed (or underemployed) English-Speaking Quebecers aged 45 and older in order to help them find work in what everyone describes as a ‘difficult’ labor market. Aside from last year’s survey in which they defined the challenges mature English-speaking workers encounter when they’re forced to look for a job in the GMA (Greater Montreal Area), the new report closes the loop as it examines what potential employers are looking for when they consider a mature individual for the job.
While the survey indicates that potential employers can well appreciate the personal qualities a mature candidate can bring to a job, it also indicates how Québec’s notorious Bill 101 is still a toxic factor which can hobble many a legitimate candidate’s claim for work in both the city and the province. According to the CEDEC report, up to seventy-five per cent of the employers consider a candidate’s lack of spoken or written French to be a major factor as to whether he (or she) can get to work.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Karen Utnakowski, a local senior rights activist. “It would be more than interesting to see what the numbers have to say about mature French speaking workers and what kind of chances they have of getting the same job.”
 Other barriers to gainful employment include what the survey describes as “inappropriate salary expectations” which, roughly translated, means the kind of money people want and need when they have a house to pay for and children to feed as opposed to some youngster fresh out of school who lives in mummy’s basement while eating cold leftover pizza slices for breakfast. New immigrants to the country are always forced to contend with the ‘Lack of Canadian experience” factor while others are obviously overqualified for the position at hand. The survey also mentioned how even the most basic computer skills are now a pre-requisite for almost any kind of work in today’s post-industrial economy where rapid and easy access to information has effectively become the currency of power in a post-modern economy.n